Respawn released a new patch for Apex Legends this week and it came with a fresh wave of puzzling features and bugs. Perhaps the most entertaining among these is a new exploit that is allowing players to punch each other from as soon as the pre-game champion screen, causing some to jump from the aircraft in a "knocked" state.
Essentially, as soon as champions are selected, players can blindly melee and – depending on their invisible positioning – make contact with opponents. This was discovered as players started hearing punching sounds while loading into games. Hitting an opponent enough times to knock them results in an immediate update from the kill feed upon loading into the map. To make matters worse, the assaulted players also require a revive from teammates after hitting the ground.
The entire bug is hilarious – or rather, was hilarious – until people started abusing it for an early advantage in the battle royale. The competitive scene caught onto the shenanigans quickly with the official scrimmage Discord channel "T1 Apex | Hub" making it explicitly clear that using the exploit would result in immediate consequences. Moderators for the channel stated, "Any punching in the plane will disqualify you from queueing with us for the day, and all matches will not count for today."
Supposedly, a hotfix has now been implemented and players are free from the pre-game boxing deathmatches.
Unfortunately, players have voiced more concern over the changes outside of the punching bug, expressing frustration at some puzzling design choices made by Respawn.
Apex Legends frequenters are very familiar with the controversy that surrounded the charge rifle (an energy-based sniper rifle that had insane utility on the battlefield). After enough time and player-rioting, Respawn nerfed the weapon and caused peace in the galaxy. The contentment was short-lived however, as the developers decided to not only add a "Duos" mode this time around (a great playlist) but also buff almost all shotguns and sniper rifles in the game. This left most players scratching their heads.
Additionally, Respawn nerfed the Wingman (a fan favorite) and added the ability to spend the ever-useless "Legend Tokens" on re-rolling daily challenges – something literally no one asked for. It does make the currency a little less useless, but it would be nice to use them to unlock cosmetics -or at least be able to convert them into crafting materials.