In the world of battle royale games, few are as competitive as Apex Legends, meaning that finding any kind of an edge is critical when playing against the best opponents. Recently, Respawn Entertainment announced that it will be patching out one of its best-known tricks, tap-strafing. This news has some players furious.
On August 31, Respawn announced on Twitter that the skilled movement tactic known as tap-strafing would be removed with patch 10.1. This has prompted many who play Apex on PC to complain loudly and publicly over the movement skill being removed -- but why is Respawn removing it in and who does this affect?
Tap-Strafing is a high skill movement mechanic that takes advantage of the game engine itself. Each time the forward movement button is pressed, the vector the player is moving can be changed slightly. Setting the mouse wheel to a secondary move forward button, players can then constantly scroll the mouse wheel while turning, performing a quick hairpin 180 degree turn. The skill does require players to know how to both bunny-hop and air-strafe (two more movement techniques) to tap-strafe reliably, meaning that while the skill is well-known, it's normally only seen from high-level players and in high-tier rank lobbies.
The main advantage of this maneuver is that it allows for incredibly quick turns to either evade an enemy or catch one in a corner with little time to react. Other legends, like Horizon and Octane, get another advantage from tap-strafing as well. Both have movement abilities built into them that provide a speed boost when performing tap-strafing. In the hands of experienced players, tap-strafing can allow for fast and unpredictable movement throughout the map.
In it announcement, Respawn explained it reason for removing the technique was "It's inaccessible, lacks readability/counterplay, and is exacerbated by movement abilities." Tap-strafing can only be performed by mouse and keyboard players, seemingly giving them an advantage over those playing with controllers. Respawn's logic was that, since both interfaces cannot perform this maneuver, it created an imbalance that needs to be corrected.
However, a lot of PC players find the statement hypocritical, pointing to one advantage controller players have over mouse and keyboard: aim-assist. Aim-assist is part of many first-person shooters, compensating for analog controllers by helping players find and stay on their targets. Analog sticks are notorious for being either too sensitive (making fine aiming harder) or not sensitive enough (making the character less responsive), things that are important in first-person shooters.
Since mouse and keyboard players don't have an aim-assist, some PC players have pointed out that, if tap-strafing is being removed, aim-assist should go as well. Despite the protest, there hasn't been any reaction from Respawn, and it seems the change will go through as scheduled. It's hard to determine what the long-term effect of removing tap-strafing may be, if there is any. After all, it's a high-skill ability that's performed by manipulating the game's engine, whereas aim-assist is an intentional feature available to every controller player in every match.
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