Apex Legends restores Movement Nerf after fan backlash

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Summary

  • Apex Legends reverted a controversial tap penalty change due to community feedback.

  • Respawn told us that unintended consequences of the change from the mid-season update negatively affected the movement mechanic.

  • The community praised the return and showed appreciation for preserving skilled movement techniques.

After feedback from fans, Apex Legends has reinstated a controversial change to tap-strafing. The original nerf to the movement tech came during the massive mid-season update for season 23 of the Apex Legends. Released on January 7th with the start of the Astral Anomaly Event, this mid-season update brought many balance changes to legendaries and weapons.

While the patch made significant changes to legendaries like Mirage and Loba Apex Legendsone of the minor notes in the Bugfixes section frustrated a large part of the community. Specifically, Respawn Entertainment added a “buffer” to tap strafes, making the ability less effective in-game. For context, tap-strafing is an advanced movement technique within Apex Legends which players can use to quickly change direction in mid-air, making them harder to hit during fights. Although the developer made the change to “combat automated motion technology with high frame rates,” many in the game's community feel things were taken too far.

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What to expect from Apex Legends in 2025

Apex Legends has had some ups and downs in 2024, leaving Respawn with an incentive to revamp the shooter in a big way by 2025.

Fortunately, this seems to be a sentiment Respawn shares. After community backlash, the developer announced that the previous tap-strafing change had been reverted. The announcement noted that the mid-season update negatively affected the movement mechanic Apex Legends and admitted that the change had unintended consequences. According to Respawn, while it would continue to try to “combat auto-fixes and degenerate gameplay patterns” in Apex Legendswould it appear to “preserve” the skill around certain movement techniques, such as tapping.

Apex Legends Restores Controversial Nerf to Tap-Strafing

This move by Respawn to restore the nerf to tap-strafing has been praised by community. One of the things Apex Legends is known for is its movement. While the regular Battle Royale game mode does not have wall running in the same sense as its Titanfall predecessor, players can make some incredible cuts using various movement techniques, including tap-strafe. On Twitter, many players responded positively to the move from Respawn.

It will be interesting to see what kind of impact this return to tap-strafing has Apex Legends. It's unclear how many people stopped playing the game in recent days because of the initial jitters. Also, it's hard to say if rolling back the change will bring back any lost players.

It's worth noting that a lot has been happening in Battle Royale lately. In addition to the sweeping changes in the mid-season update, Apex Legends began the Astral Anomaly Event, with new cosmetics and a new version of the Launch Royale LTM. Respawn also noted that it values ​​player feedback on recent changes made to the game, so more updates may happen to fix other issues in the coming weeks.

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