It’s fair to say that the success of Apex Legends took everyone by surprise, not least of all the developers themselves. Now Respawn has revealed their plans for the game’s future, but unfortunately those plans involve delaying future Titanfall games indefinitely so that they can fully support the former title.
Respawn currently has two separate development teams, one is working on Apex Legends and the other is working on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Nobody who is working on the latter title will be moved to work on Apex Legends , so the development of Fallen Order will continue unaffected. However, those who would be working on future Titanfall games have been moved to help “fully support” Apex Legends . This means plans for Titanfall games have been “pushed out”, meaning they’ve been delayed indefinitely.
Instead, Respawn is using the time to make vital improvements to their battle royale title and to add more content. The more critical issues the team is addressing are things like audio issues, battling against cheaters, tracking down issues with hit registration, and improving slow server performance at the start of a match. As the latter problem is not consistent with server configurations or individual machines, the team is struggling to replicate the issue but it is an “extremely high priority”. News on all of those issues has been promised for the “next few weeks”.
In terms of upcoming content, the team is adamant they want to avoid crunch like that currently experienced by the Fortnite team. As such, they will be providing a new Battle Pass, a new Legend, “something new for the meta”, and more at the start of every season. Throughout each season, there will then be the addition of “small features”, as well as the usual gameplay imrpovements and bug fixes. The team does not intend to update the game every week, preferring to go with “large, meaningful changes to the game that have lasting impact”. The team also promises to be more transparent on future updates to help improve communication to players.
Respawn will be one of the studios in attendance at EA Play in June. Here players will see what the team has planned for Season 2, including “a Battle Pass with more meaningful content”, a new Legend, and a new weapon. They’ve also promised changes to Kings Canyon. As soon as we hear about those changes, we’ll be sure to let you know.