Respawn Entertainment first revolutionized the battle royale genre by introducing respawn beacons on Apex Legends’ launch, allowing eliminated legends to get back in the fight. Season 19 now seeks to change one of the most important features with respawning teammates.
Sara Rindi, Senior Communications Director at Respawn, confirmed the changes coming to Ignite, which includes fallen legends respawning with their armor and non-care package weapons intact, allowing them to defend themselves after landing.
Community reactions to these changes have been extremely mixed, with many pros, content creators, and casual players all chiming in on the discussion.
Former FURIA Pro turned Content Creator Jacob “HisWattson” McMillin thinks the changes are good for the competitive ecosystem. He stated that respawning teammates is now more viable, as they are no longer easy sources of LP in ranked and KP in ALGS due to having white shields and no weapons.
At the highest level of competitive play, retrieving a teammates’ banner is almost impossible without a Crypto, as the large number of teams alive in the final rings and limited positions to safely hide in or defend makes teams cut their losses and run away to survive for placement points.
Even when teams get late-game resurrections, legends that aren’t Horizon or Valkyrie are easy pickings, slowly landing on the ground with nothing but a few syringes and shield cells in their inventory, making the effort pointless and even detrimental in Pro League, as it gives opposing teams more points for eliminating the returning legends.
HisWattson also pointed out how the new changes heavily discourage ratting, a strategy that has plagued the ranked ladder for multiple seasons, and has even been directly acknowledged by Respawn as a serious problem. Season 19 now presents the best opportunity for any duo or solo surviving squad to get their teammates back and aim for winning the game, rather than just settling for second place.
However, HisWattson’s opinion isn’t shared in the competitive community, with TSM’s Coach Raven taking the exact opposite stance.
Despite Apex Legends revolutionizing the genre with retrievable banners respawn beacons, Raven argues that teams who lose fights and cut their losses should be punished accordingly, as the process of respawning teammates has always been difficult to safely pull off.
Despite the numbers disadvantage, new mechanics introduced in later seasons have made it easier for dead legends to get back in the fight. Crypto’s drone can remotely retrieve banners, season 5 put Mobile Respawn Beacons into the game, and the season 16 class overhaul allows any support legend, like the new legend Conduit, to craft banners instead of physically retrieving them from the death box.
Respawning teammates has been made easier than ever in all of Apex’s history, and Raven pointed out how death is just a minor setback rather than a game-defining event like in previous seasons, especially with the season 19 changes.
Not everyone is concerned with the meta implications, as some are worried about the exploitability of the new respawn mechanics. Although the changes benefit teams reviving their fallen allies in the heat of battle, they could also unintentionally serve teams far away from any enemy presence.
With the new system, a player with red shields could theoretically eliminate themselves with grenades or jumping off the map, allowing their teammates to loot the red shields and weapons off of their death box.
Once their teammate has looted the higher level shield, they can be revived, with the new changes still guaranteeing that the dead legend keeps their last obtained shield level and weapons. This potential exploit allows for an entire team to farm up to red shields, all without having to deal any additional damage.
Even though the effort requires two respawn beacons and a lot of time away from the action, similar exploits have not stopped cheaters in the past. Famous console cheaters and boosters used Crypto and respawn beacons to farm damage and KP, with season 19’s respawning changes only making it easier for cheaters to team up against innocent players with unfair shield advantages.
Despite all of the speculation, players will have to wait and see how the new respawning changes stick the landing when season 19 of Apex Legends drops on Oct. 31.
