Leading up to the Feb. 13 launch date of season 20, Joshua Mohan, lead game designer at Respawn, gave a sneak peek preview of the newest limited time mode coming to season 20 of Apex Legends.
Issue 363 of Game Informer’s digital magazine featured Apex as its cover story, with 10 pages dedicated to interviews with multiple developers, and direct screenshots showcasing season 20’s upcoming changes. One segment discussed the future of LTMs in Apex, and the reveal of Straight Shot, a smaller and faster spin on the standard battle royale format.
Straight Shot features 30 players in a lobby of 10 squads, as opposed to the standard 60 players in 20 squads. All teams will automatically be sent towards a predetermined location in a smaller ring, facilitating faster fights and shorter match lengths. All weapons in Straight Shot are fully kitted like care package weapons, with no attachments spawning in on the ground, cutting down time spent looting and encouraging squads to fight even faster.
Straight Shot will also offer a completely new feature in Apex: The ability to immediately queue up for another round of the LTM. Instead of being prompted to return to the main menu, an eliminated squad can choose to spectate the perspective of their killers while waiting for the next lobby to fill up, providing a seamless transition from game to game.
“On the most casual end, people sometimes experience randomness as overwhelming or frustrating or arbitrary, and they bounce off the game as a result,” Mohan told Game Informer. “You shouldn’t feel like randomness determines the outcome. So, that’s the goal in the coming year.”
Mohan’s statements reflect on Respawn’s past design philosophy and changes throughout Apex’s four years, and the willingness to experiment with alternate game modes as seen in other shooter titles. VALORANT found great success with its Swiftplay gamemode, which cut standard game lengths in half, and gave players a set amount of scaling credits per round, reducing the randomness in the economy system.
Likewise, Apex’s steady introduction of non-battle royale LTMs with preset loadouts and maps like Control and Team Deathmatch have also found great success with the casual audience, leading to their permanent inclusion in the Mixtape playlist.
Respawn also intends to reduce randomness in the standard battle royale with changes like improvements to the evo shield system, which gives players more control over how they level up over a match and how their legend abilities evolve with each level, instead of winning by a lucky landing spot.
Currently, Respawn has not confirmed when the Straight Shot LTM will start, or how long the mode will last. However, with the third run of Three Strikes ending and season 20 starting on Feb. 13, players could potentially expect the new lighting-fast game mode to be featured as a day one release.
