Apex Legends night mode looks incredible – but would it work?
Bill Dunford - NASAAn Apex Legends player has come up with an incredible concept for what the popular battle royale would look like at night, but questions remains as to whether a night map would be practical.
A lot has changed in Apex Legends since it was first introduced to the online gaming world in early February, but one thing has remained largely constant – the time of day on the map.
Every match is played during the daytime, under a bright blue sky filled with innocent clouds and the piercing light of the sun illuminating the entire map.
One question that has come up frequently is whether or not Respawn Entertainment would even make a night-mode, and how the map would look if they did.
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One user on Reddit, ‘VooDsXo,’ designed a concept for a darker version of the map, setting the time of day to dusk and flooding the landscape with dark orange, brown, and black accents.
While there is no question that the concept looks amazing, there are some doubts as to whether such a map would work well with how the game currently functions.
Several Reddit users commented reasons for why such a design might not work, with muzzle flash being one of the functions mentioned.
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“With the muzzle flash in this game, you wouldn’t see anything at all once you started shooting!” wrote ‘Sen_55.’
Other users brought up things such as the fact that certain cosmetic outfits for Legends would stick out way too much on dark map, or the fact that those affected by color-blindness would have a much harder time playing.
“As somebody that is color blind, I think this would be way too dark for me,” wrote ’emullin222.’ “It’s always super hard for me to see people on dark maps like this.”
However, there are just as many, if not more, who really want to Respawn implement this sort of feature in the game, and offered solutions for some of the more prevalent concerns.
“Could add lights to guns, and they could automatically turn on and stay on, so you have to be cautious about ADS,” suggested ‘RandomPlayerJoined.’ “Add flood/street lights in areas, put flood lights on all the buildings. Put search lights on top of Cage and let them rotate and do a ‘search pattern.’ More thermal scopes – just some things that came to mind.”
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A lot of users didn’t stop there, even suggesting that the developers add more weather and time-of-day variants to the map in order to mix things up a bit.
“We’ve been playing six months on the very same map over and over again,” wrote ‘bricious.’ “I think we deserve some map weather and time variations to keep us fresh, like a night more or so.”
Of course, when it comes to the likes of Fortnite, PUBG, and Blackout, Apex Legends’ main rivals in the battle royale genre, all three have been very consistent in offering different variations of their map.
Fortnite has always had a night version of their map, in addition to all of the seasonally-themed changes, such as a widespread snow storm during winter and a desert biome during the summer.
PUBG’s weather system offers dynamic maps, and Blackout, although not having an outright night version, has add elements such as fog, bloody waters, flooding, and more.
Whether or not something like this will actually be added remains a big uncertainty, especially since nothing of the sort has been found in any of the leaks for the upcoming third season.
That said, the possibility isn’t ruled out by any means, and the more players ask for these kinds of things on public forums, the greater the chance they’ll end up seeing results.