Respawn lead designer Brent ‘Scriptacus’ McLeod revealed why they have been slow to change Caustic’s unique ability kit despite backlash from Apex Legends fans.
Apex Legends now has up to 12 different playable characters each with their own unique abilities and playstyles.
Caustic, The Toxic Trapper, is one of the Legends that has been picked less frequently by players as of late, as his kit can interfere with teammates and their gameplay.
Many players have complained about the fact that Caustic’s ‘Nox Gas’ abilities temporarily slow and blind anyone, including teammates, who find themselves trapped among them.
Despite the backlash from many of the popular battle royale’s fans, Respawn has not yet made changes to his kit and revealed why they have such a hard time balancing his abilities.
Respawn developer Scriptacus explained that making changes to the Nox Gas would have a knock-on effect on the way matches and even other characters are played.
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Comment byu/kaylee2028 from discussion inapexlegends
“It’s not the difficulty of the individual change, it’s that plus everything else,” he shared, “changing Caustic Gas has knock-on effects that we’re dealing with even now.”
Scriptacus explained that they had considered multiple options to balance Caustic’s abilities such as implementing “team colored gas,” which had been previously suggested by u/BananaSalvaje, before explaining that even that solution could be exploited.
“I personally dislike that idea because it makes it easy for a squad to abuse their immunity to their own squad’s gas,” he added, revealing just how complicated it could be to balance major issues.
Although Scriptacus was hesitant about implementing some of their solutions, it was revealed that Respawn would likely attempt some of their fixes in the near future despite having to correct some other elements of the game that might be affected.