Respawn dev reveals thinking behind Automatic Charge Rifle

Weapons are getting one of the biggest mid-season overhauls for some time in Apex Legends, with the Season 23.5 update that was revealed today. There is a change to the very dominant Mastiff, a whole new Accelerated Weapon mechanic and the return of the much-loved Select Fire Hop-Up, but this time on the Charge Rifle.

These changes will make combat and fighting feel very different when the update goes live tomorrow. There are adjustments to weapons that work at all ranges, close, medium and long.

esports.gg spoke to Respawn developer Eric Cavanese who is the games Lead BR designer ahead of the Season 23.5 update to get the inside scoop on the changes coming to weapons tomorrow.

You can read full details about todays Apex Patch notes here.

Perhaps the most standout change in the Apex Patch Notes released today are to the Charge Rifle. It is getting a range of upgrades, including taking the Select Fire Hop-Up. If you equip this on the Charge Rifle, it can enter a brand new automatic mode.

Apex Legends has never had a fully automatic sniper, and this is a very bold move by the Respawn team. What was the thinking behind it?

"The Charge Rifle represents a very high skill weapon with a high reward, but we have found that the barrier of entry to actually use the weapon is a little bit too daunting. Missing those shots is like you're ringing the dinner bell and letting people know that you've got a huge long fire rate. If you're not hitting those shots, it's just not worth running.

"So, we're taking a stab at the base of the charge rifle, just its regular version to make it a little bit more approachable by making its damage output a little bit more consistent at closer ranges. You don't have to get really incredible range to hit those kind of crazy numbers.

"But, when we were taking a look at the Charge Rifle and how difficult of a weapon it is to get into, we thought is there something even more drastic we can do to get people onto it and get people using it a bit more.

"So that's where the alternate fire came from. Using the Select Fire on it now toggles you into this automatic firing mode. We've been very curious about, for a number of seasons internally, what does an automatic sniper look like in Apex? So we've tried a couple of different things and prototypes internally to see what that looked like.

"When we were paring that desire with having such a difficult weapon to get into, we thought, OK this is actually a pretty cool pairing. We can get a low barrier of entry gameplay on a naturally difficult weapon to use. Which then pushes people to have it in their loadout more, use it in those ways a bit more. So it's really to satisfy, what does auto-sniping look like in the game? But also how do we do it in a way that doesn't make it oppressive right off the bat?

"By using the Select Fire, it gates that gameplay until a little bit later in the game when you're not fighting just people with white armors. And it allows us to tune it a little bit hotter because we know it's kind of going to come a little bit later. But really, it's just a lot of experimentation that we've been eager to see what the community will do with and a weapon that sort of despite our efforts to try to get it into the limelight has remained a very difficult weapon to use."

Another big change revealed today comes in the form of a brand new hop-up, which will introduce a new concept called "Accelerated Weapons". Using his weapons will grant bonus EVO and Ultimate Charge. For now, it comes pre-installed on the Nemesis, G7 Scout and CAR SMG.

"We've often tried to experiment with more utility based hop ups and finding the right way to get that into players hands. But by doing something that isn't just changing the way the weapon fires or changing the damage output of the weapon. Giving weapons like a little bit of a different identity.

"So when we landed on this accelerator concept of giving more EVO, giving more ultimate charge, we had that as a regular hop up for a long time and it was fun, it was a well liked hop-up. Players liked it, we liked using it.

"However, the very nature of accelerating your EVO and your Ultimate games is something that just makes more sense early in the game. Whereas the nature of hop-ups, kind of like with the Select Fire, is that you don't get them for a while and you're through your journey when you do. With this concept, there is no reason for you to be picking these up now, you're kind of stabilized, and you've already looted into the guns that you want.

"So we wanted to try to challenge the hop-up system a bit and say, what if these weapons come with the hop-up baked into them from the start? That way, when people are deciding whether or not they want to run these weapons or they want to lean into the gameplay of extra Evo and extra Ultimate, they can do so from the beginning with one choice, instead of the stars aligning, finding the gun, and then finding the hop-up. So it's sort of another experimentation. Like, do players like this? Is it too much power right off the rip?"

The three weapons that get this hop-up initially have been specifically chosen as weapons that are underperforming currently in the game.

"The CAR itself is underperforming, and we wanted to give players a reason to run the car without just making it be the best damage SMG. It's very easy for us to be like, okay, cool, we'll just give it some more damage and then make people run the CAR.

"We wanted to see what would it be like if players are running these weapons for different reasons, for reasons that aren't necessarily purely offensive in nature. They're more like, I'm going to use this because I have a long cooldown that I want to reset, or I have a short cooldown that I want to fire off many, many times. There's different ways and legends will synergize with this sort of hop-up very differently.

"The G7 Scout just felt really good. It's like a very fast-paced marksman rifle. We knew that we wanted to give it on something that has range on it, because the idea of poking to fill up your Evo, poking to fill your ultimate before you make a push was really compelling. We felt like that gameplay is really strong, but we wanted to match it with an identity that aligned with fast and speed. So the G7 was the one there.

"The Nemesis, which is a very good gun and a very well-liked gun. However, in the realm of Assault Rifles, it's just not top of the pack. You're still going to run your 301s and your Flatlines. It's a strong gun in the right hands, but it does tend to lose the preference battle. And so we felt like giving it this sort of utility would be, again, another way for people to bring that kind of unique burst gameplay back into their loadouts."

A never ending battle for the weapons team at Respawn is the battle between Shotguns and SMG's. There are pretty diehard fans of both groups of weapons, and as the pendulum swings between the two one set of players always feels a bit hard done by.

In Season 23, that pendulum is firmly with the Shotguns. The Mastiff in particular stands out as a very powerful weapon, and that is getting some adjustments in this patch. The Peacekeeper is getting a few buffs, separating the Shotguns in the game a little bit more, so they all have specific strengths and weaknesses.

"Right now, the shotguns are definitely running amok. Like they're out there! It is a never-ending battle. We could sit here two seasons, three seasons ago and you'd be asking me the same question but flip-flop why are SMGs better than shotguns? In fact, we probably have talked about that!

"Honestly, it's not really a battle to win or to lose. It's just about making the game feel fresh and exciting. One of the two being dominant right now doesn't mean it's the only thing people are going to run forever.

"So when it comes to the Mastiff right now, it's simple, it's over tuned. It's effectiveness at range with the ADS tightening just allows it to do more than it should. It becomes sort of a jack of all trades shotgun, but it's a really, really powerful jack. It's really good in each of those ranges and it doesn't really suffer.

"So by pulling its range in, by increasing the blast pattern, the ADS scaling, it's gonna create some room for the Peacekeeper to breathe. When we think about a shotgun that can reach out and touch players from farther away, we want that to be the peacekeeper with its naturally and intently built in choke mechanics. So, by pulling back on that with the Mastiff, we're then pushing some of that power into the Peacekeeper.

"This means we have a better economy of  which shotgun am I gonna Octane in and barrel stuff with, and which shotgun am I going to be intentional and methodical with, peeking corners with a choked up Peacekeeper for instance."

Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest Apex Legends Season 23 news.