The upcoming ninth season of Apex Legends will be a great challenge. And I think Season 7 is huge, with new maps, new vehicles, and all the rest of the content, but it all seems too old now. Season 9 brings new characters via jetpacks and provides a new permanent mode for players who want to stand out from all the battle royalties; It is fun. Arenas is a new 3v3 mode for fast and intense team battles on a dedicated map. I played a few games in the preview event and I must say that this is the Apex update that I am most excited about.
Before I can tell you exactly about the fun of Arenas, it’s worth explaining exactly how it works, because it’s so different from anything Apex did before. This is a 3v3 team deathmatch, in which the first team to win three rounds or lead by two wins participated in the match. If each team tires with four wins each, then the ninth round will be a tiebreaker. You choose your own legend, such as jumping into a real escape (without knowing the choice of another team), and there is no change of legends between rounds, so you cannot switch to one role against others. Play a metagame. The game is also more like an elimination game: if they are taken down, you can resurrect your friends, but if they are completely killed, they will not be reborn.
Each round starts from the purchase phase, where you can buy weapons, weapon upgrades, abilities, and items such as grenades and medical kits, for example in Valorant or CS: GO. These production materials cost. You will receive some materials in each round (the amount will increase in each game), and then you can earn more by killing enemies, winning rounds, etc., and you can find more materials in the containers throughout the arena. Therefore, if you want to get stronger in the next round, you can prioritize the sweep before facing the enemy. At the beginning of each round, you can enter the store.
As seen in games like Valorant or CS: GO, this is a purchase phase and it will provide you with a certain amount of crafting materials for the purchase of weapons, weapon upgrades, abilities, and items (such as grenades and lives). ). As the round progresses, you will get more handcrafted materials, and based on your performance (getting kills, winning the round), you will also get more. Most importantly, containers of handmade materials will also be placed around the arena, so if you want to improve your skills in the next round, you can grab those containers first before engaging the enemy squad.
In the store, you will find popular (very good) guns like R-99 SMG and Flatline assault rifles that are pricey, while small sidearms like Mozambique shotguns and P2020 pistols are free. In the first round, you will only get enough crafts to buy a good weapon, although you may take a greater risk to play something, and then get some junk to save your materials so that you can do better things later. The cost of legendary abilities also varies a lot. For example, the Phantom bait is quite cheap and the Gibraltar dome shield is more expensive. In fact, you can get some of these fees for free, but the developers still want you to be able to use their legendary unique features without being penalized for it. You can also buy the maximum power of Legend, but judging by my performance I honestly don’t think it’s worth it.
The game in Arenas is very fast and I didn’t see many opportunities to use the latter. They are also expensive, and it seems more valuable to buy some decent upgraded weapons and make sure I have some extra shield blocks in my inventory. A gameplay like this, but make sure everything is balanced. Design Director Jason McCord said that the entire buying phase was actually one of the breakthroughs in creating Arenas, making them realize that this could be a permanent model.
He told me, “In internal testing, when we didn’t have characters to buy their abilities, we were playing dogs in every game, constantly scanning the entire map, and the stealth drone came and circled it. Everyone,” he told me. “I remember someone bringing up the idea, ‘What if you want to buy them?’ I remember the feeling at the time was, ‘No! What are you talking about? This is the identity of the character that you can’t make me pay for it!” “Although it worked fine, Respawn only changed a few features to make sure it worked. will adjust to the Arenas. Valkyrie’s ultimate ability has been adjusted to fly faster but lower to ensure she doesn’t get close to the map, and Lifeline ult can guarantee she’ll use some useful items instead of completely random ones.
But what will happen during the game? Well, once you have bought what you need, you will break free from the launch room in front of the enemy squad on the map. Arenas retains some of the content in Battle Royale mode. You will still have a circle around you, gradually forcing you to get closer to the enemy team. Things recovered quickly. When you go to the supply ring or box area, you need to be with the team to get more consumables. Although the arena isn’t huge, enemies will often rush straight to the same area you own. What follows is a small-scale battle. It’s great to have such a quick firefight, without worrying about other teams seeing and waiting for a third when they’re all weakened.
The five Arena maps also provide pleasant terrain for you to play. I found out that Phaserunner is one of the new custom arenas, very suitable for sniping. There are many places where you can build a nice little defensive area and carry out some long-range battles before charging into battle. So far my favorite is the Party Crasher map. Mirage has rammed her cute party barge into the city center, leaving several small buildings and barges to fight. It can carry out close-quarters close combat and has a beautiful neon nightlife. In this mode, it is very different from Battle Royale. I asked Respawn about the challenge of balancing the character and if he stepped up. You will see the balance change based on performance in the new mode.
The game’s chief designer, Daniel Klein (Daniel Klein), said that the whole buying part is mainly about how they fit Arenas. They have no plans to balance the legend in different ways in each mode (at least not beyond the previously mentioned Valk and Lifeline adjustments). For Competitors: Arenas will adopt a ranking model in the future, but the developers say this is still a long way off. I’m excited about Arenas and can’t wait to see how it develops.
The developers told me that one of the main reasons they created it is that people who are interested in Apex but don’t like Battle Royale can give it a try. From my point of view, I think this will also help players avoid getting addicted to the Royal Royale formula. Apex is one of my games, but sometimes you don’t want to play against 60 other players? Arenas will head to Apex Legends in Legacy Season 9 next week on May 4. It will arrive with the new legendary Valkyrie Valkyrie, who has an excellent jetpack and some concerning abilities.
