New LTM: Control

Hey Everyone, I’m Mark Yampolsky - Systems Designer on Apex Legends and I’m super excited to share Control, our newest Limited Time Mode that’s kicking off when our latest season, Defiance, goes live on February 8th.

Presented by Silva Pharmaceuticals under the stewardship of Duardo Silva, Control is a new way to play the Apex Games and is our first big team mode in Apex Legends. This time, you’re not just fighting alongside your squadmates; you’re fighting alongside eight other players for control of various strongholds throughout the Outlands.

Control  is all about taking the things that make Apex Legends awesome - our characters and their abilities, our gunplay and movement - and recontextualizing them in a mode that puts you in the center of fights that would not be possible in our Battle Royale or Arenas modes, all while keeping things fast-paced and low pressure.

The team that controls the battlefield, wins the match. 

Death isn’t the end of the road in Control  (so remember not to hammer that “Leave Match” button). That’s right, you always respawn. In fact, you’ll respawn every time you die - and fairly quickly too. Use this as an opportunity to try different strategies, try new weapons, or think of new ways to play. Control is all about experimentation and letting you play with all of the tools Apex has to offer knowing that if a flanking maneuver doesn’t work - you can always try again.

While choosing your spawn, you can also change Legends or loadouts to switch up your playstyle. The battlefield shifts quickly and you need to be able to adapt. Whether you’re sniping from a distance, or you’re rushing the zone with a heavy LMG, changing your Legend or Loadout is an opportunity to adjust your strategy. You can also choose different optics for your preferred style of play.

Controlling zones is the key to winning in Control. Zones are where massive fights happen and you can synergize your character abilities with the rest of your team to get an advantage in the fight. Owning a zone earns you points every second, and the more zones you own the more points you earn every second. The first team to reach the score limit of 1,250 wins.

Sometimes, Timed Events will shake up where the action is.

Capture Bonuses will place a one-time point award on a selected zone and start a countdown timer. The team that owns this zone when the timer hits zero will earn a large amount of points. These bonuses concentrate attack/defend gameplay around a valuable zone and shift your attention around the battlefield. 

Airdrops are opportunities to grab powerful crate weapons to give you a damage output advantage, but watch out because they’ll run out of ammo if you’re too trigger-happy.

Controlling the frontline also means controlling where you can spawn. Owning zones is key not only to earning points but pushing forward on the battlefield. By default, players can always spawn on their Home Base. If you own the zone closest to your Home Base,this will become your Forward Operating Base and you’ll be able to spawn there instead, closer to the frontline. You’re only allowed to spawn on zones that have a direct connection to your Home Base.

If you own the center zone, you’ll be able to spawn there if you also own your FOB. This is how the central zone has a direct connection of reinforcements from the home base. This also means if you own the central zone, but you lose control of your FOB, you will lose the ability to spawn on either zone. This makes back-capping a powerful strategy for a team to divert attention from one zone to another and orchestrate a push for a capture.

Owning all three zones at once is a difficult feat to accomplish, but if your team can pull it off it opens up a powerful position that may let you end the game early. Once a team successfully controls all three zones at once, the match goes into Lockout.

Lockout starts a timer, and the controlling team can hold the lockout until the timer reaches zero, they will immediately win the game. However, if the team that is locked out can successfully regain control over any zone, they will abort the lockout and the game will resume as normal. Holding all of the points is a powerful point-earning opportunity for the team that controls the lockout, but holding all three zones for an extended period of time is a tricky proposition that only the most skilled and coordinated teams will be able to pull off.

Apex has always been played in an arena for the shock and awe of an audience, and Control is no different. This time Duardo Silva, Octane's father and the mastermind behind Control, is sweetening the pot with the new Ratings system. As you play Control and perform actions that help your team - capturing zones, killing enemies, assisting teammates - you’ll grow your own personal Rating.

Audiences like seeing clutch plays, and the more you do things to help your team, the higher your Ratings will be. Ratings are broken up into tiers - blue, purple, and gold. Each tier is progressively harder to earn but grants you more powerful weapons. Every time you gain a tier you’ll also earn your ultimate to make use of your Legends ability in powerful ways. Once you’ve hit max tier, you can continue earning Ratings to earn more ultimate charges, even if your loadout has been maxed out.

When you die your Ratings will reset and you’ll have to earn them back in your next life.

Kills don’t matter as much when everyone can just respawn, so in place of the Kill Leader, the player with the highest Rating will be the Ratings Leader, the player who is really doing the most. Killing the Ratings Leader can boost your own Ratings, and when the Ratings Leader dies, you’ll have to exceed the Ratings they had as leader if you want to take their place.

Control takes you to familiar locations in the Outlands - Hammond Labs on Olympus, and Barometer on Storm Point, with extra cover and updated traversal options to support dense firefights.

We’ve added plenty of cover, and even constructed entire new zone geometry to keep fights engaging and dynamic. There’s new ziplines, skydive launchers, and even Tridents to use to your advantage as you careen across the battlefield and into your next fight.

We’ve heard your concerns with Escape and we’re making sure that you can complete your challenges and earn progress on your Battle Pass regardless of how you play Apex.

In this season we’re introducing dailies and weeklies that can be completed in any mode. We’re also introducing a set of Control-specific challenges and badges that will be live while the mode is playable that you can grind as well.

Control will kick off when Apex Legends: Defiance launches on February 8th, and will be playable for the first three weeks of the season as we celebrate the third anniversary of Apex Legends. We can't wait for you to get your hands on it and look forward to hearing what you think.

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