Recently, Loba has been rendered ineffective on World’s Edge, after the Lost Treasures event accidentally muddled up her code. As a result, the Portuguese thief’s tactical ability ‘Burglar’s Best Friend’ was misfiring on the Season 3 map.
Respawn confirmed soon after they “were aware” of the issue, and revealed the Loba glitch had been caused by “World’s Edge-specific code triggers.” On July 7, they shipped an update designed to squash it, once and for all.
Game Update! We've pushed out two updates this morning:
?Fixes addressing Loba's tactical usability on World's Edge. There are still some known cases we're continuing to work on but it should work much better now.
?Mobile Respawn Beacon has been added to all modes.
— Apex Legends (@PlayApex) July 7, 2020
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like everything has gone according to plan. In fact, players are now reporting the same teleporting issue appearing on Kings Canyon too. That’s a big problem because most ranked games are hosted there.
One annoyed player, ‘Reinjecto,’ confirmed they had seen Loba’s ring glitch “often” on Kings Canyon post-patch, with most instances happening “around buildings.” ‘CaptainMayo95,‘ another disgruntled fan, warned in the update’s Reddit thread that Loba was “still as broken as before the patch.”
These reports are a little confusing because they don’t exactly line up with Jason McCord’s comments on the problem. Respawn’s design director suggested all the current Loba issues had been caused by World’s Edge-based triggers.
“Triggers are done a little differently on World’s Edge… it’s the same user-facing functionality, just authored a slightly different way,” the Apex developer explained. “[Then] the code changed and broke her bracelet for those specific World’s Edge triggers.”
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One reason the problem could have spread is the fact Kings Canyon got a bit of a facelift as Apex returned to the original map in Season 5. If the new map version shares code with the World’s Edge design, Loba’s ring could glitch on both.
On July 1, when McCord first flagged that a patch was on the way, he admitted the devs had considered flicking the switch on Loba for a bit to solve the issue. They made the call not to so that players could still “play her if they wanted.”
It might just be time for Respawn to bench the Translocating Thief for a while. The bug seems to be getting worse, if player reports are anything to go off. Dexerto was only able to replicate the bug twice, but that’s still more than zero, and it does seem to be making Loba pretty unplayable.
For now, maybe hold off playing Loba in ranked queues. If you still can’t stay away from the feisty Portuguese thief that’s fine, but stick to casual lobbies; a failed teleport won’t feel as bad if it’s in a fun, non-ranked game.