Apex Legends fans are counting down to the start of the new season. Apex Legends Season 22 Shockwave has an August 6 release date on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC. The new content will be playable from 6pm BST UK time/ After the recent controversy involving the Battle Pass, Respawn will be hoping that the new season gets fans back on board with the game. Apex Legends Shockwave introduces a brand new map to the game, as E-Disctrict joins the game. It features gravity launching traversal, as well as plenty of high-rise battlegrounds for combatants.
“This map was designed to offer players a fresh and innovative experience,” Respawn explains.
“While it retains the core elements that define a great Apex map, we also pushed the boundaries by incorporating numerous buildings, emphasising verticality, and creating varied landscapes.
“These changes ensure some of the most diverse fights and end-ring locations across the map.”
Respawn is also introducing Trios Revival, which is described as “a new twist on respawning without banners or respawn beacons”.
Providing one player is still standing, players will automatically respawn based on a timer until the fourth ring.
However, the respawn timer will increase with each death and each round. Living squadmates can speed up the timer by taking doing damage and eliminating enemies, so it’s got a bit of a risk vs reward element.
Needless to say, the new season also ushers in a new battle pass, complete with a ton of new rewards.
The accompanying update also makes a series of bug fixes and balance changes, which you can see in the patch notes below.
Apex Legends Season 22 patch notes…
WORLD SYSTEMS
• Improved end ring generation system
BUG FIXES
• Can no longer use Death Boxes through walls
• Cleaning up disconnected players in Mixtape
• Firing Range: Mythic weapons are no longer taken away after respawning
• Fixed a storm point zipline that could kick players off too early
• Fixed bad actor ping crashes
• Fixed prowler spawn den bullet collision hull
Adaptive Supersampling
• Fixed an issue that caused screen tearing
• Fixed an issue that caused Legend banner poses to appear distorted
Death Boxes
• Improvements to help stop deathboxes from getting stuck in doorways and blocking exits
• Should now be lootable in broken doorways
• Will now contain a shield core if the enemy disconnected before dying
LEGENDS
• Alter’s ult can no longer be used for free if you place it onto a moving object and use it immediately
• Bangalore smoke highlights should no longer get blocked by other players
• Fixed an issue that let players affected by Catalyst ultimate to see through Bangalore smoke
• Movement hitch when using Seer’s passive while unarmed should no longer occur
• No more thefts from an explosive hold without warning, destroying Loba’s Black Market
QUALITY OF LIFE
• Mantling on the same location as your teammate won’t knock you down
• Mixtape Gameplay
– Additional starting grenade added for Control & Lockdown
– EVA 8 back into Close-Quarters loadout
– Faster health regen for all mixtape modes
– Lockdown Score Limit reduced to 400 (was 500)
– Reconnect match timer reduced to 2 minutes (was 5 min)
– Team Deathmatch Score Limit reduced to 40 (was 50)
• Mixtape’s Skull Town got a spawn audit (adjusting positions & angles)
• Nessies can once again bounce to their hearts content in the firing range (just not anywhere else)
• Speaking of, a new Nessie (with an appreciation for cinema) has appeared around the firing range
GRAPHICS
• Largely optimized Performance Mode on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, for more consistent frame rates and fewer resolution drops
– Xbox Series X and PS5 can expect 10 FPS or higher improvements in GPU-intensive scenarios
• DX12 (PC)
– Fixed several causes of graphical corruption issues
– Large optimizations to both CPU and GPU performance.
– With these changes, we expect that the DirectX 12 beta should now perform better than DirectX 11 for the majority of players.
• PC: removed Adaptive Supersampling video settings option.
– A small percentage of players used this option and received no benefit unless they had a powerful GPU and low res monitor
• Mitigated performance impact of looking at Death Boxes and intermittent performance spikes from champions banners