Five Years of Apex Legends: Best Removed Features

Apex Legends has changed drastically over the first five years of its life, and sometimes features need to be removed to make the game better. However, months later you might live to miss them.

As part of esports.gg's celebration of five years of Apex Legends, in this piece we'll highlight the most interesting features removed from Apex Legends. From legend abilities, to map locations to weapon attachments to game modes, many of these removed features have a hint of nostalgia for players who've stuck around with the game since its launch.

The Apex Legends community largely sees Lifeline as a powercrept support legend with abilities that are no longer the benchmark. However, at launch she was the only support legend, and her kit was very different. Her passive, Combat Medic allowed her to revive legends faster under the cover of a shield, and she could also heal faster than other legends. However, she had to be occupied in the revive animation, unlike now. The ability was removed in Season 9.

There are a few that argue her ability to automatically revive both her downed squad mates at the press of a button with her DOC while she roams around freely is better. The game eventually added Newcastle, who can spawn a shield while dragging and reviving a down ally. Sound familiar?

Sometimes, it feels like Wraith takes ages to activate her tactical ability Into the Void now. However, this wasn't always the case. Her tactical ability was considered quite OP by the player base, making her the most popular legend in the game. Her phase animation would activate almost instantly when players pressed the button, allowing her to escape far too many sticky situations. It also didn't help that her hitbox used to be extremely difficult to land shots on. The developers repeatedly nerfed this, making her much easier to play against.

Every veteran Apex Legends player yearns for the infamous hot drop brawl in the original Skull Town. Kings Canyon was the only map in Apex Legends when it was released and Skull Town was the ORIGINAL hot drop in the game. Almost the entire lobby would repeatedly drop in Skull Town to duke it out and the squad that survived Skull Town walked away in glory with empty ammo slots. The developers removed Skull Town in Season 5 as part of a map rework as they "destroyed" it. Skull Town later returned in Season 14 as "Relic". But it isn't the slugfest it once was.

When World's Edge was introduced in Season 3, it had a unique feature which made it stand out compared to King's Canyon. It had a mode of transport. A train, to be specific, which moved around the map and could be stopped by players. The train carried loot bins with high-tier loot and would move on a railway track that enveloped World's Edge. Apex Legends removed the train as a feature on World's Edge as part of its Season 6 update. Or rather, stopped it and destroyed a part of the tracks, where the train now lies in a wreck. It did however, return as part of a Christmas LTM.

Kings Canyon, being the original map has seen a lot of changes. From Season 5 to Season 7, it had underground loot bunkers which held high-tier loot and also a lore interaction for Crypto. These Loot bunkers were removed in Season 8 and replaced with the ordnance-based loot vaults we see across the map today. The loot bunkers added an interesting dynamic and an opportunity to ambush a squad looting them, just like the IMC armouries on Storm Point.

This didn't last long, but in Season 0 when the game was just released, players could attach long range scopes on SMGs. Imagine Prowlers, R99s and Alternators running around with large 2x-4x scopes. It was hilariously weird, yet some players enjoyed using them that way. We reckon the modern Volt could do pretty well with a long-range scope, with its decent recoil pattern and bullet drop. Since Season 1, only ARs, LMGs, Marksman weapons and Snipers can use these scopes.

The Select Fire hop-up turned the Havoc into the original Charge Rifle in Apex Legends. Unfortunately, it's been a good while since that hop-up returned to the game. Both the Prowler and the Havoc could use it. It gave the Prowler a full auto mode but the most interesting aspect of it was what it did to the Havoc.

The Havoc received an alternate firing mode which turned it into a charged laser shot with a hitscan beam that dealt a large amount of damage on hit. Eventually, they rendered this firing mode redundant with the Charge Rifle so they removed it from the Havoc, and eventually removed the Select Fire hop-up from the loot pool. But the hop-up added a lot of versatility to the Havoc's kit, turning into a long-range as well as close-range weapon in one package.

Apex Legends originally introduced Disruptor Rounds as a new hop-up in Season 2. They could be attached to the Alternator and RE-45 to make them more effective against other strong late game weapons. Needless to say, they were kind of disruptive. *Ba Dum Tss*.

Many veteran players speak about the PTSD flashbacks from the sounds of the Disruptor rounds as they vaporized shields. The Alternator had become far too powerful with this attachment and they removed it in Season 3. It's back now, but is a nerfed version, thankfully.

We knew these would go, but they were great while they lasted. Some hilarious bugs, or unintended interactions between player abilities sparked a lot of joy within the community. And mischievous shenanigans, of course.

Rampart could deploy her turret on Crypto's drone at one point, which led to hilarious scenarios - for the attackers. This would transform the drone into a terrifyingly strong gunship. While fun to perform, it was annoying to deal with if the Rampart on the turret had good aim. Nevertheless, it was possible to disrupt this prank by simply destroying the drone, which would then lead to an easy kill on the Rampart separated from her squad.

Another hilarious bug caused certain Legend abilities to stick to Gibraltar's gunshield. Like Octane's Jump Pad or a Caustic toxic barrel. Attaching the jump pad to Gibby's shield would result in a rather hilarious outcome. Gibby could use the Jump Pad to bounce around the map menacingly. Some players also created a large sword for Gibby by stacking Caustic barrels on his gun shield.

One of the funniest glitches in Apex Legends was the loot bin super jump glitch. It appears these loot bins didn't just have the storage for loot but energy as well. Players discovered that if they punched an opened loot bin enough times and jumped on top of it, it would launch them extremely high into the sky and work better than a Redeploy balloon. Of course, this was quickly patched once it caught on among the player base.

Okay, we get it. A lot of players pretty much hated Arenas after a certain point, prompting Respawn to remove it. But it's seeing a resurgence of sorts, with lots of players asking for it to be added to the Mixtape playlist. Turns it it wasn't as boring as the players thought and the developers stated in a recent interview that they might rework it and add it in the future.

Okay, we're cheating a bit here when we call this a PVE "mode" but in Season 5, Respawn Entertainment added a unique PVE quest called "The Broken Ghost". This was essentially like a Story Mode for Apex Legends and planned only for Season 5. It had a PVE element against an early iteration of the prowlers we see on Storm Point. Of course, with the Prowlers and the IMC armouries on Storm Point, we do have PVE elements in the game now, but they aren't dedicated game modes. Here's hoping the developers add more PVE quests to the game.

There are a lot more features that Apex Legends has removed through its five exciting years. However, these stand out the most, simply because of how frequently the community talks about them.

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