Apex Legends Delays Tap-Strafing Change
Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has announced that it has delayed its planned and previously announced changes to tap-strafing. If you are not already familiar with tap-strafing, it can largely be boiled down to a method of making hairpin moves using quirks of movement in the game's engine and key rebinds -- and it requires a mouse and keyboard. The developer still intends to make changes to tap-strafing but discovered some unexpected side effects to the changes it was looking to implement and therefore is taking more time on it.
As for why Respawn Entertainment is removing tap-strafing at all, the initial explanation was fairly clear. Respawn believes it to be inaccessible and that it lacks readability and counterplay. In addition, movement abilities from Legends like Horizon or Octane simply make the problem worse. According to the new update delaying changes to tap-strafing, it would seem that Respawn still believes all of that to be the case, but that it does not want to screw anything else up in the process.
The @playapex team has recently discovered some unexpected side effects of our planned changes to tap-strafing.
— Respawn (@Respawn) September 13, 2021
It is still our intention to address some of the most egregious use-cases of tap-strafing, but for now we are delaying our planned change to a later patch.
"Movement is sacred in Apex," a follow-up tweet from Respawn reads. "We weigh every change to these systems carefully and value feedback. After further testing, we've concluded we need to take more time to get this right to make sure related movement mechanics aren't caught in the cross-fire."
Apex Legends' latest season, "Emergence," is currently available in the game. The season brought with it the new Legend Seer among many other changes. Apex Legends itself is currently available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. As of Season 9, the popular free-to-play video game appears to have dropped the number in favor of a name only with "Emergence" technically being Season 10. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the popular video game right here.
What do you think about the delay for the planned changes to tap-strafing? What do you hope to see changed next in Apex Legends? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!