Respawn has confirmed exactly when things will be kicking off with the launch of Apex Legends Season 7.
The good news is that there’s plenty to look forward to, even if there are a few server issues or patches to download.
Apex Season 7 is going to feature a new Legends characters, Battle Pass, vehicle and release on the Steam platform.
For those who are getting ready to play Apex Legends on Steam, Respawn has made it possible to preload the game.
This means that you can be ready to experience everything when it kicks off later this week.
A message from Respawn explains: “Apex Legends is now available to Pre-load on Steam. The Steam release will feature cross-progression with Origin, allowing players persistent progress across both accounts.
“Season 7 of the award-winning Battle Royale features a new map: the floating city of Olympus. Plus new Legend Horizon arrives to upend the competition with her gravity-defying tech. Olympus features levitating “Trident” vehicles, giving gameplay an exciting new dimension.
“To celebrate the launch, Steam players will get free exclusive Portal and Half-Life-inspired gun charms for playing this season.”
WHAT IS THE APEX LEGENDS SEASON 7 RELEASE TIME?
Developers Respawn Entertainment has confirmed that the Apex Legends Season 7 release date has been set for Wednesday, November 4, 2020.
The Apex Legends release time has been set for 8pm PDT on Wednesday, which means a later launch in other regions.
For Apex fans in the UK, Season 7 will be starting at 4am GMT, on Thursday, November 5, 2020. So while there will be a little more waiting for some gamers, there’s plenty of stuff happening over the next 48-hours.
WHAT’S IN APEX LEGENDS SEASON 7?
New Legend: Horizon
She’s the newest Legend, a brilliant scientist, and a master of gravity manipulation. She has a deep connection to the new arena, and a motivation that will tug at your heartstrings.
Horizon’s custom space suit allows her to fall from great heights and control her movements in the air. Using her custom technology, she can use gravity lifts to give her team a vertical boost, and she can even deploy NEWT (her small robot named after her son, Newton) to drop a micro black hole that pulls opponents into the center for some serious crowd control.
ABILITIES
- Passive: Spacewalk: Increase air control and reduce fall impacts with Horizon’s custom spacesuit.
- Tactical: Gravity Lift: Reverse the flow of gravity, lifting players upward and boosting them outward when they exit.
- Ultimate: Black hole: Deploy NEWT to create a micro black hole that sucks in nearby Legends.
New Map: Olympus
The Legends have entered a new arena: the sky city of Olympus. A utopia floating in clouds above Psamathe, it was once a place where the brightest minds in the Outlands could gather and exchange ideas. However, an accident in an experimental research facility led to the creation of the Phase Rift (a massive bubble of Phase energy), and the city was abandoned.
Now players can use Olympus’ luxurious amenities to their advantage. Rotating agricultural towers, beautiful gardens and classy restaurants serve as new stages for intense skirmishes. New vehicles called Tridents give your squad a way to boost into battle and take your enemies by surprise. The Phase Runner – a tunnel of Phase energy running through the center of Olympus – lets you cross the map in seconds. And the Rift stands tall over everything, mysterious and beckoning.
New Vehicle: The Trident
Exclusive to Olympus, the Trident is a hover car designed for your whole squad.
Cruise the highways to avoid chokepoints or use the boost to soar over jumps, this thing is made to speed up those early game rotations. Drive in third person, or ride as a passenger in first person with full shooting capabilities. The Trident is durable, so it will never explode, but damage applied from enemy fire will be dispersed amongst the players in the car. Don’t worry, you can still do full damage to players by hitting them directly so we expect to see some amazing Kraber shots. Disembark to park it anywhere and use it as makeshift cover in the late game.
The Trident interacts with Legend abilities in many different ways, experiment and have fun!
LTM: Olympus Preview
To help you understand and explore the map without fear of getting shot, we are introducing a new playlist called Olympus Preview. This mode teams you up with 30 Legends on Olympus and allows you to roam the map to learn map drops, loot areas, and practice your routes to the end game. Circles are still on and once circle 4 finishes, players are brought back up to the plane to start the second skydive run. There are a total of 3 runs before the match ends. This mode is only available for one week.
Legend Meta
Bangalore
Dev Note:
Not much to say here. Rolling Thunder will continue to function primarily as a zoning ability, but with a somewhat shorter fuse, it will encourage enemies to leave the zone slightly faster.
Caustic
Dev Note:
Fighting in Caustic Gas is one of the most frustrating things in Apex Legends, and yet we need the gas to represent a meaningful threat or else enemies will just ignore it. With this change we’re attacking what we think is the greatest contributor to this frustration: the fact that your vision is blurred while you’re in gas. This made it extremely hard to fight back. To make up for lost power, we’re upping the damage from the gas a bit.
Mirage
Dev Note:
Our bamboozler-in-chief is a hard Legend to keep relevant. Every time we make a change to decoys, there is a clear uptick in usage and power as Mirage mains learn to use their new tools, and then as the rest of the world catches on and starts being able to tell the real Mirage from his equally handsome holographs, that uptick disappears. This time around we want to try and make it a little bit harder to clear out decoys. We’re giving them health, but to make this very clear up front: they will not work as a shield. While they take damage from bullets, the bullet also passes through them and hits whatever’s behind them. This is what we call the hallway test: you should not be able to win an engagement against an enemy in a straight coverless hallway by snapcasting a decoy and having said decoy eat an entire Wingman shot. Decoys will also play unique hit effects and briefly flicker out of existence when taking damage to help you differentiate between them and the real Mirage.
Octane
Dev note:
Octane is a Legend for players who like to go fast, run face first into the enemy, and get knocked down a lot. We think that’s absolutely fine; the fact that his Trios winrate isn’t great doesn’t really bother us because both his encounter win rate (think of this as his ability to score knockdowns) and his pick rate are very healthy. That said, we figured we could give him a little extra out of combat help. His passive’s heal rate was very slow, requiring up to 200s to fully heal your health bar.
Wattson
Dev Note:
Wattson is the anti-Octane: not super powerful individually, not picked very often at all below Plat, but an absolute must have for competitive squads. We’re also happy with that niche, but figured it would be safe to give her a little extra power in her best case: people running into her fences. We’re aiming for this to bring up her power and attractiveness at lower levels of play especially, since we don’t see a lot of players run into Wattson fences in high skill matches.
Loba
Dev Note:
We’re taking another swing at making Loba the ultimate Legend to bring to solve all of your team’s loot needs. We have heard your feedback that you want improvements to her tactical as well, and while that’s certainly not off the table, our data suggest that her encounter win rate (how many knockdowns she gets compared to how many times she’s knocked down, across all matches) is quite healthy. It’s her Trios winrate that’s worryingly low. Make no mistake: this is a major swing at making Black Market powerful.
Rampart
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Sheila: Now takes 1.25 seconds to fully spin up, down from 2 seconds.
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Amped Wall: Now takes 3 seconds to fully build, down from 4 seconds.
Dev Note:
In patch 6.1, we made a small change to how long it takes Sheila to tighten her bullet spread. This didn’t meaningfully increase her winrate. The other half of that change is in this patch. We do not want to change Rampart away from being a Legend that requires setup, but we do want to make it faster to set up. Amped Wall should remain a mostly out of combat setup ability rather than a reactive ability and Sheila should remain an area denial tool rather than a murder machine, but like all things, these balance points exist on a spectrum, and with this patch we’re moving them slightly closer to reactive/murder machine territory.
Pathfinder:
Dev Note:
Pathfinder continues to be an overachiever in terms of win rate. The good news is that his grapple change in 6.1 didn’t move his win rate by much (it went up 1% in total). We’re doing two things this patch: we’re adjusting his hitboxes and we’re putting in tuning for Grappling Hook that will firmly move it into buff territory. More context below!
Hitbox: Pathfinder has a tall but extremely skinny hitbox. A lot of his model isn’t actually shootable and particularly his arms and legs do not represent a lot of shootable area either. Here is a before and after comparison of Pathfinder’s hitboxes:
