Changes to Arc Stars and custom reticles coming to Apex

Alongside the excitement of new skins and a Wattson Heirloom coming next week, players can also expect a few new gameplay adjustments and options in Apex Legends when the new Raiders collection event launches. Chief among the changes is another adjustment to how the Arc Star works.

Players argued for a long time that Arc Stars were simply too strong in the game since getting stuck with one applied damage from the stick, damage from the explosion, and a slowing debuff to the players stuck, which basically spelled instant death. Respawn tried to dial this back in the Legacy update back in season nine, removing the slow debuff when players were stuck. Many players still weren’t pleased with the state of the Arc Star—and apparently, the devs weren’t either. 

The new Arc Star sees the slow debuff when stuck return to the game, but the devs reduced the maximum damage the Arc Star can do to a shielded enemy from 90 to 40. They also changed how the post-detonation slow affects players, with the slow being dependant upon proximity to the explosion. As the patch notes explain, the balance team was concerned with how “removing the stick slow created some degenerate play patterns and often made it hard to tell when you got stuck in the heat of battle.” The Arc Star adjustment now makes the grenade a bit more tactical in its application, as opposed to a weapon of pure burst damage.

Another welcome change coming with the Raiders update is the implementation of custom color reticles.

The reticles in Apex have been a default red since the release of the game. The only way to previously change the color was to play on one of the game’s several colorblind modes. Many players favored playing on the Tritanopia setting, which kept many of the colors the same but changed the reticle color from red to a lighter yellow. This only provided a couple of pre-set alternate color options, however, and came with an annoying trend of players without Tritanopia complaining when changes were made to the game to actually help colorblind players.

With the Raiders update, players will now be able to create their own custom reticle colors. Using either recommended colors, a rainbow color slider, or manually entering an RGB color, players can fine-tune their reticles to their own specifications. There’s even support for the brightness of reticle color and sample environments to test out the reticle color while adjusting it. As Respawn designer Justin Masse notes, the custom reticle color will apply to all sights in the game with the exceptions of the 1x digital threat and the 4x-10x sniper digital threat—both sights that highlight enemies red when aiming down sights. 

To customize your reticle, simply go to gameplay settings and select the “Customize” option under reticle. And to get a feel for all the changes coming to the game, drop in when the Raiders collection event releases in Apex on Dec. 7.