Apex Legends dev shares 4 top tips to instantly improve

Mike Cook, a Senior Technical Artist at Respawn Entertainment, has shared his top four tips to improve at Apex Legends, as new players are joining the Titanfall-inspired BR in Season 7.

As more and more content is added to Apex Legends, the game’s learning curve for new players steepens. While skill-based matchmaking will go some way to protect newer players from domination, it can still be a difficult acclimation period.

One Apex Legends player shared their experience of the first 60 hours on the battle royale, summarising that they “just don’t think it’s working for me.”

“I don’t know how everyone is so good at shooting in just silver. Every game I either lose or get carried with lowest damage/kills,” the Redditor said. “I’ve practiced in the firing range and no change. The recoils are brutal, I’m moving to make it harder to hit me, the enemy is doing the same, and I hit maybe 2 shots before I go down… I’m thinking that shooting games are just not for me.”

The player in question finished by asking if there was a guide to help them. As it turned out Mike Cook, a Senior Technical Artist at Respawn, chimed in with his view, offering four major tips to improve at Apex.

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Cook stated that it will just take practice, and said good aim comes down to four major points. The first and second relate to understanding a weapon’s recoil and range, for which he recommended the game’s Firing Range. The last two tips were to predict enemy movements and target your shots into an enemy’s upper body when in a close-range engagement.

Apex Legends dev tips

1. Understanding the recoil pattern of the weapon. Firing range helps a lot with this. Once you understand the recoil you can counter it while you fire to keep the bullets going as straight as possible.
2. Understanding your engagement distance and bullet drop off. Firing range helps with this as well. Knowing how far your enemies are and aiming higher to counteract the drop off so they land where you want.
3. Predicting player movements. If someone is running to your left and they jump, you can guesstimate where they will land and aim there instead of aiming directly on them. This gives you a split second to predict, aim, and shoot.
4. Where to aim: If you’re up close, aim right below peoples necks, recoil makes your weapon kick upwards and you can get some headshots in.

But, the dev admits that even with practice, some of it comes down to natural skill, and even those with great aim can still do poorly due to their position.

He reiterated how important both positioning and cover are in any gunfight. “You can have potato aim like me, and still pull off good plays based solely on your positioning,” he continued. “Having plenty of cover to mask most of your body is key. Don’t be afraid to peek out, shoot, then take cover. The harder you are to hit, the less damage you take.”

The player responded to thank Cook for his detailed response, and took it as encouragement to stick with Apex for some time longer. Whether they experience a turnaround in fortunes remains to be seen but, if you’re also struggling in Apex, check out the Respawn developer’s full advice.