Summary
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Apex Legends has reverted a controversial change to tap-strafing due to community feedback.
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Respawn shared that the unintended consequences of the change from the mid-season update negatively affected the movement mechanics.
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The community praised the reversion and showed appreciation for the preservation of skillful movement techniques.
After fan feedback Apex Legends reverted the controversial change to tap-strafing. The original move tech nerf came during the massive mid-season update for Season 23 Apex Legends. Released on January 7th with the start of the Astral Anomaly event, this mid-season update brought numerous balance changes to legendaries and weapons.
While the patch made significant changes to Legends like Mirage and Loba Apex Legendsone of the minor notes in the Bug Fixes section frustrated a large part of the community. Specifically, Respawn Entertainment added a “buffer” to tap-strafes, making the ability less effective in-game. For context, tap-strafing is an advanced movement technique in Apex Legends which players can use to quickly change direction in mid-air, making them harder to hit during fights. Despite the developer making the change to “high framerate auto-movement combat technology”, many in the gaming community think it was taken too far.

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Fortunately, that seems to be the sentiment in Respawn's stock. After community backlash, the developer announced that the previous tap-strafing change was reverted. The report noted that the mid-season update change negatively affected the movement mechanics Apex Legends and admitted that the change had unintended consequences. According to Respawn, it will continue to “fight against automated solutions and degenerate game patterns” in Apex Legendsit would like to “preserve” the skill surrounding some movement techniques such as step-strafing.
Apex Legends brings back the controversial Nerf to Tap-Strafing
Respawn's move to revert the nerf to tap-strafing was praised commonwealth. One of the things Apex Legends is known for its movement. While the regular Battle Royale game mode does not feature wall running in the same sense as his Titanfall predecessors, players can pull off some incredible clips using various movement techniques, including tap-strafe. On Twitter, many players responded positively to Respawn's move.
It will be interesting to see what impact this return to tap-strafing has Apex Legends. It's unclear how many people stopped playing the game in the last few days due to the initial nerf. Additionally, it's hard to say whether rolling back the change will bring back some players who failed.
It's worth noting that a lot has happened in battle royale recently. Aside from the massive changes in the mid-season update Apex Legends launched the Astral Anomaly Event, which brought new cosmetics and a new version of the Launch Royale LTM. Respawn also noted that they value player feedback on recent changes made to the game, so there may be more updates in the coming weeks to fix other issues.