Despite all of Apex Legends’ successes in season two, one problem continues to plague the popular battle royale—audio.
It’s fairly common for players to relish in their victory after wiping an enemy squad while they calmly loot their spoils. Then, another team appears out of nowhere, with the only sound indication being bullets eating through that newly-acquired armor.
One player shared their experience in a Reddit post when an enemy team killed their squad with only a second of notice.
In the video, the player and their team were looting while an opposing team was taking a zipline up toward them. But the zipline was silent and all the player heard was the thump of footsteps when they hit the ground in front of them. A second later, he was taken out by enemy fire, clueless as to what happened.
This is one of many instances of audio failing to alert players of incoming enemies since Apex’s launch. In a Twitch clip, popular FPS streamer Guy “DrDisRespect” Beahm IV faced a similar situation when a player running at him was unannounced by any audio cue.
DrDisRespect angrily criticized the game for its poor audio after the enemy Mirage ran toward him with silent footsteps. “I gave this free-to-play game a compliment on their audio, and this dude is… running, and nobody can hear him,” DrDisRespect said.
Respawn’s last patch addressing audio was in May, where the developer targeted issues of sound dropping out or going missing, distortion for a short period of time, and enemy footstep volume. “We have made improvements both in our code and with our content that will hopefully fix these issues for many players,” Respawn community manager Jayfresh said. “We have also addressed some of the other mix issues with the game, including increasing the volume of close proximity enemy footsteps… We will continue to monitor mix issues and address them as necessary.”
Even with these changes, however, players are still getting blindsided because gunfire, friendly footsteps, and the Apex announcer all drown out the sound of opposing teams.
Apex’s season two has dramatically improved the game, but fans continue to hope that the next patch fixes the audio inconsistencies.
