Respawn gives update on Apex Legends frame rate, Legend hitboxes, and audio issues

Respawn Entertainment

Apex Legends players got a look into what the developers have in mind for upcoming patches to fix burgeoning problems affecting the game in the March 27 Respawn Check in.

Among others issues in King’s Canyon, Respawn Entertainment are going to target even more hitbox errors that have been widely reported, audio problems ranging from distortion to flout out drops, and a whole lot more.

While the devs have been making strides into fixing most of the problems in the game, it seems like some solutions still elude them for the time being.

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Respawn EntertainmentThe devs are still looking to prefect hitbox problems that have been affecting some Legends.

Frame rate Cap

Apex Legends allowed players to get up to 300 frames with a simple workaround. However, the developers noticed a bug that forced those players to still play with the default 144 frames.

The team behind Apex is now looking to come up with a solution targeted to release with the next patch to resolve the issue.

Respawn EntertainmentThough hitboxes have been a prime target for Respawn, problems with some Legends’ persist.

Hitboxes

The devs confirmed that there is still an underlying problem with some Legends’ arms and upper bodies. They are seeing that hits can sometimes seem like they connect but the inflicted damage doesn’t always go through.

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For the community to help with a fix, the Respawn team stressed to players to report and share clips if the problem pops up in their games.

Audio Issues

Respawn is aware of the “audio dropouts” that some players have been experiencing. The issue will sometimes cause some sounds throughout the game to be partially or completely missing.

Thankfully the developers have been made privy to the issues around enemy footsteps either being too quiet or completely silent in close proximity.

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Although the company gave some troubleshooting tips that players can perform on their end to improve audio performance, they’re still looking to resolve the matter.

Respawn EntertainmentSeems like some sounds can still go missing at random times in the game.

Game Crashes

The devs also offered some insights into the many game crashes the PC community has been experiencing. While they’ve made long strides into eliminating the problems, it doesn’t look like all issues have been resolved.

While the crashes have also been affecting console players, Respawn is planning to include “improvements to overall stability in an upcoming client patch.”

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To get the full briefing on the coming changes, check out the Check In below.


Respawn Check in: 3.27

Hey all,

Today we wanted to check in and provide some info on some of the topics we’ve seen discussed this week that we can speak to:

LEGEND RESTING BONUS TO 50K XP THIS WEEK

Remember, every week the resting bonus for Legends will increase by 25K. As of today the total resting bonus you can earn for each Legend is 50K. Next week will be 75K and so on and will cap at 250K.

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FRAME RATE CAPPED TO 144 ON PC

In the last patch we made an update with the intent to cap frames at 300 if players bypassed the default 144 frames per second. This introduced a bug that capped frames to 144 regardless if players uncapped it or not. In the next patch we’ll be fixing this so the cap is 300 as intended.

XBOX UPDATE YESTERDAY

Xbox players should have noticed a small update that needed to be downloaded yesterday. This was address some stability issues on Xbox One.

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LEGEND HITBOXES

Thank you to everyone that’s been catching and reporting this. After investigating on our end, we were able to confirm that there is an issue regarding hitboxes around Legend arms and upper bodies. This was why you would see a shot appear to connect but not always register damage. We have made some small improvements server side but are still investigating other examples players are sharing and doing tests to repro and address. Please continue to report and share clips if you can.

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AUDIO KNOWN ISSUES

Issues we are aware of and currently looking into:

  • Audio dropouts, where sounds or parts of sounds in the game seem to be missing at times.
  • Audio distortion, where there is loud static or mangled-sounding audio that plays, generally during large gunfights and/or heavy concentrations of players.
  • Close enemy footsteps being too quiet, or silent, in some situations.

Some troubleshooting tips that could help improve your audio performance:

  • Hard drive performance is the biggest factor, so anything that can make your hard drive faster can help, including:
    • Defragging your PC HD prior to the game installation.
    • If possible, we recommend using a fast HD to install the game onto, such as an SSD or a 7200 RPM HD.
    • It can potentially help to make sure that the hard drive is not being hit by other background processes, such as downloading other games or recording video to the same HD as the game.
  • Currently, the game does not support quad audio. If your game is currently set to that, please change it to stereo or another surround option, such as 5.1 or 7.1, if your setup supports that.

When you experience audio issues or bug, here is some info you can provide to help us identify the problem:

  • General system specs, including the particular console you are on (PS4, PS4 Pro, XB1, XB1S, XB1X) or the PC and hard drive used, if on PC.
  • Analysis of other things going on during the game at the time – was there generally poor performance from server lag, bad frame rate, etc.
  • Video if you happen to be able to capture it in a non-performance hindering way.

AN UPDATE ON CRASHES

Last week we dropped a small patch for PC. This patch included a fix for the biggest offender causing crashing on PC that we were able to identify thanks to all the apex_crash reports players sent to us. Since then, we’ve seen the daily crash rate on PC drop by about 90%.

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This has been promising to see but we know we’re not out of the woods yet. We’ve been investigating the remaining causes for crashing we’re seeing and planning to add better communication from the game with error messages and tips to help players troubleshoot issues in the event of a PC crash in a future update.

We are aware of reported crashes on consoles as well and will be including improvements to overall stability in an upcoming client patch. I can’t say specific dates yet but we’ll let you folks know when we can and will include patch notes for it.

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