That didn’t take long. A day after an update which functionally nerfed tap strafing, one of the most popular advanced movement techniques in Apex Legends, Respawn walked the change back, citing “community feedback.”
That feedback was more like an uproar from several high-profile pros, streamers, and many other players who enjoy Apex‘s slippery movement mechanic. Tap strafing, which began its life as a movement bug and quickly became a fundamental mechanic in the game similar to mouse and keyboard players’ ability to move while looting death boxes, allows players to instantly change directions in mid-air, maintaining their momentum. Respawn originally said the change was a “buffer” added to the mechanic in order to “combat automated movement tech,” but the change just ended up making many tap strafes feel sluggish and not nearly as effective.
“For movement aficionados, feedback and feel around movement systems are critical, and there’s legitimate skill expression that we intend to preserve,” Respawn said in its announcement today.
The announcement still said the dev wants to fight back against automated workarounds and exploits in play, including “advanced movement tech that warps combat in unhealthy ways,” which could give pause to many players for which tap strafing and other strafes associated with the technique are an essential part of their experience.
Of course, if you’ve played Apex for a while, you’ll know this is something of a never-ending battle between developers and players. For developers, tap strafing represents unpredictable movement and can give unreactionable advantages to highly skilled movement players in close quarters, exacerbated by the high speeds players can achieve on characters like Octane and Pathfinder. For the players’ part, these movement techniques represent why many fell in love with Apex in the first place, as the wide range of movement options tap strafing and other techniques open up allow people to express their skill in different ways. Simply put, tap strafing is fun, and many players don’t want to lose that. The devs also recognize this, and don’t want to take away players’ fun—but they do still want to balance the game.
Now, tap strafing is back to the way it always was, to the delight of many players. And that’s good, since Apex needs all the players it can get right now. The game’s player count has been in steady decline for most of the last eight months, according to Steam Charts, and didn’t get as big of a player bump as it usually does at the beginning of the current season due to it being a bit of a filler season with only one character rework and the game’s newest map, E-District, rotating out of the map pool incredibly quickly after it was first introduced. The long wait for the esports scene to ramp back up the ALGS Championship, which typically drives player excitement around the game, also hasn’t helped.
At least now tap strafing is fixed and we can all get back to what really matters: Yelling at the Loba player on our ranked squad to stop running away from team fights.
