Different types of skill expression are changed when we touch something like perfect air control, for better or for worse. One could argue that bunny-hop healing lowered the skill-ceiling-players could make up for misplays with less constraints on their ability to safely heal. I feel it’s important to note that limitations don’t always equate to lowering skill-gaps there are skill-gaps in working within constraints. How is third partying affected by mobility? Within a fight, how are frontlines defined? How quickly can I close the gap on an enemy? As a game, Apex is designed to work well with a finite number of movement possibilities. Why don’t we just do more of that? Well, over time (and I’d say we are already seeing it) mobility creep can open up a Pandora's box of new problems to solve. It’s not surprising that mobility legends are highly popular. While many love the freedom that Apex’s movement system affords, constraints are just as important. Mobility creep is something to be very mindful of in this game. But Path grappling past and tap-strafing back into your face with a Mastiff, or Octane cranking 90s while maintaining ridiculous speed both bring up greater gameplay concerns. The third point, and the most problematic, is how tap-strafing is exacerbated by movement abilities. I can buy that a tap-strafe at normal velocity in a gunfight occurs infrequently and is relatively mild enough to not immediately kill with fire. While it’s not terribly prevalent, I’m concerned about how this could continue to evolve as more players adapt and further develop their tap-strafe mechanics. Secondly, tap-strafes have terrible readability and limited counter play. Path grapples and Octane pads aside, I’ve seen clips of players breaking ankles with victims (including high-skill players) who are at a loss for what to do. By “inaccessible,” we mean that it’s an opaque technique that’s practically impossible to learn organically (and the most egregious examples require a strange keybind). The first issue: it’s highly inaccessible. Even in a M&K-only Apex world, or a scenario where controller and M&K could tap-strafe just the same, we don’t believe it would be a healthy change with the freedom it currently allows, for three main reasons: This is why we believe tap-strafing exists solely as a design problem. But, accessibility isn’t the same as balance design, and it’s a strawman argument to treat it as such.” When people say, “Gee dang it, Respawn’s balancing decisions cater to controller players,” the best answer I have is: “When it comes to accessibility, we often must consider controller players given the constraints compared to M&K. Players should not feel forced to use a specific input type to stay competitive When top-level controller players say they would be alright with nerfing aim assist, we definitely take note. As Apex and its players evolve, it’s only prudent for us to continue to evaluate whether or not aim assist needs adjustment. Since tap-strafing is a unique M&K mechanic, many platforms have asked about our approach to controller-specific systems like aim assist. Things like wall-bounce redirects back onto that same wall should feel unchanged, but movement afforded by scroll-wheel strafing will be removed.
That’s what I’m thinking of when I use the term “tap-strafe” throughout this post. Our goal is to remove some of the sharpness in momentum conservation around 90°+ angles.
Thanks to the work of a couple of our engineers, this is now easily tunable on the fly, and we have the ability to iterate on or even revert it completely without a client update. Movement should feel unchanged for controllers and for M&K (mouse-and-keyboard) players who hadn’t heard of the term “tap-strafe” until this week. To be more explicit, this change targets multiple rapid directional commands after jumping. Internally, we generally use it to describe what many associate with scroll-wheel strafing. Tap-strafing is a term associated with different sorts of movement, depending on who you ask.
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