Apex Legends' Valkyrie will no longer be able to take mid-air "coffee breaks"
Latte to the third-party.
There's normally a bit of tuning work to be done when a new legend is introduced to Apex Legends, and jetpack-wielding hero Valkyrie is no exception. Some of her flights are lasting a little longer than Respawn would like, it seems, and the developer has decided to clip her wings.
As explained by associate live balance designer John Larson, players figured out that hovering with Valkyrie's jetpack currently costs very little fuel - and were using this to "take coffee breaks above the final fight in scrims". It reminds me a bit of when Fortnite players used planes to stay out of battles until the very last moment.
In any case, the 10 percent fuel cost for hovering is now being removed entirely, and from Thursday onwards it will cost you the full 100 percent to hang around in the air. When asked why it was being removed rather than nerfed, Larson said that Respawn experimented with a 50-75 percent fuel cost, but found that this "didn't feel meaningfully different and still allowed Valk to stay airborne for too long in certain final rings.
"It could potentially affect any game that went to final ring, not just scrims," he added.
And as for why the reduced fuel mechanic was introduced in the first place, well, Respawn "didn't know for certain if it would manifest itself as an issue", but it seems this one just didn't work out. "There's a lot of things in this game that I've thought could be scary, but never turn out to be (the dps on Sheila, for example)," Larson added.
So bad luck Valkyrie mains - it looks like you'll be having ground coffee from now on.