Apex Legends’ L-STAR has failed to make a splash on the battle royale in recent months; the Energy LMG gets ditched for basically any other gun in the class as soon as possible. However, the devs are looking at ways to make it more viable — just not right away in Season 9.
The L-STAR is a bit of an anomaly in Apex Legends. The Energy LMG doesn’t have your regular magazine system, instead working on an ‘overload’ mechanic, giving you an infinite magazine at the expense of having to cool down every so often.
Up close, it’s a huge threat. That makes it great in the early game in drop fights.
However, if someone yoinks your ammo, you’re left with nothing but a paperweight. It doesn’t have a ‘magazine’, so there’s no bullets in the L-STAR when you pick it up. You need the ammo stacks.
Apex Legends players have since petitioned to try and give the L-STAR some base ammo. While Respawn is hesitant to add that, developers have added that they are looking at L-STAR changes as a whole in Season 9, but they’ll come after the launch of the Legacy update.
“It’s not a problem every time because guns have their ammo spawn next to them, but it definitely is too common that you get one with 0 ammo and can’t use it,” developer David ‘AmusedApricot’ Bocek explained on Reddit.
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The idea of adding flat ammo to the L-STAR isn’t the solution, in Bocek’s eyes, because it can be abused in a lot of edge cases to farm energy ammo. To try and exclude those cases would make things too confusing for casual players. Instead, they’ve got other solutions in mind.
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“There’s one that we think is a decent solution, it has some weirdness but I think it’s worth it for the benefits. But, from the technical side, it gets pretty hairy and has the potential for lots of bugs,” Bocek admitted.
“We have some initial work done, but it wasn’t ready for the next season launch.”
While he didn’t explain the exact changes, hopefully, it won’t be much longer until the L-STAR becomes a bit nicer to use — at least in this aspect.
