New Apex Legends bug leaves Vantage players grounded

Bugs in Apex Legends continue to persist throughout each season, causing headaches for players in many different ways. Maps being disabled from all playlists, legends ignoring nerfs, and ranking systems resetting players back to Rookie, the bottom of the ladder. The newest reported bug now affects one character in a major way, effectively disabling an ability crucial to their survival in the battle royale.

Upon the release of the Sun Squad collection event, many players started reporting a bug affecting Vantage’s Tactical ability, Echo Relocation. When pressing or holding the button to deploy Echo, instead of spawning at the player’s crosshairs, the bat would spawn across the map, as far as 1000 meters away from Vantage.

Echo’s placement is vital for Vantage players’ survival, as they require a direct line of sight to use their movement ability. One common use for Echo Relocation is to hold down the interact button, deploying Echo in a straight line and allowing Vantage to instantly boost forwards with faster speed and a double jump, similar to Octane’s Jump Pad. 

With Echo spawning halfway across the map, however, players are unable to use the ability until he returns to Vantage’s side. Manually repositioning Echo while he’s deployed continues to work as intended, but any time players recall the bat, the bug will take effect upon the ability’s next use, once again spawning Echo across the map.

Similar problems with other legends’ deployable abilities have also surfaced in the past. Crypto’s drone has featured a bug that spawns it at the center of the map, rather than in front of the player. The drone automatically recalls when outside of Crypto’s 240 meters max range, effectively negating the entire ability.

Not only does this bug affect Crypto’s drone, but it also ruins the mini-map’s usability, as all icons, including teammates, crafting materials, and the location of the map itself are mixed together. The bug effectively makes Crypto players lose more information than they gain, as they must manually pull up the big map to find where the next ring is pulling towards.

Although Echo starts traveling back to Vantage on their own, players can manually recall the bat to make him return faster. While Crypto’s drone always takes two seconds to recall, Echo still has to manually return to Vantage’s side, a problem also unanswered by the bug.

Respawn has historically been quick to introduce patches and hotfixes concerning game-breaking bugs and addressing accidental changes to legend abilities. With the severity of the bug making one of Vantage’s key abilities useless, players will have to adjust to keeping Echo out on the map, or risk losing their one repositioning tool when starting a fight.