As part of Apex Legends' season 6, the way armor worked was changed: all armor became Evo Armor, and its protective value was dropped by 25 hit points. This resulted in a reduced time-to-kill that proved controversial with players, given that Apex's relatively long shootouts, at least by battle royale standards, are part of its appeal. Now, armor values are going back to the way they were, though the all-Evo change will remain in effect.
As design director Jason McCord explained, internal playtesting had previously suggested it was too easy to reach maximum armor and that doing so made positioning and ambushes less valuable. Even when someone had the drop on them, good players would have too many hit points to be outplayed. The armor nerf fixed this for their playtesters, "But, we are a small group of people compared to the millions that play Apex Legends every day. The skill levels in our team are varied, and big balance changes are really only going to be vetted when we get feedback from all of you."
The full patch notes include a variety of other changes, and also note that an "inappropriate Caustic voice line" was removed. Caustic had referred to Korean character Crypto as a "rat", which may seem like an ordinary insult to you and me, but has a history of use as a racial slur against Asian people. Respawn writer Tom Casiello defended the removal of the line after seeing it described as watering down, saying, "Do you have so little faith in us as writers you think we can’t come up with a better insult than a rodent?! He’ll call him a dung beetle or a maggot or a cockroach, or… a dozen other things that didn’t double as slurs."
... a dozen other things that didn’t double as slurs. I know you’re all trained on a lifetime of MSNBC vs FOX, and it’s “pick a side”, but all i give a damn about is if it changes the story or...September 3, 2020
