Apex Legends Adds Penalties For Leavers In Arenas, Boosts Wattson And Valkyrie

Whenever there's a team-based game, there will be leavers. And whenever there are leavers, there needs to be some kind of penalty for their negatively impacting their teammates' play experience. And whenever there's a new mode in a game with no such penalties ... well, you can guess what's going to happen.

Respawn Entertainment didn't, or maybe it just got lost in the development pipeline, but the Apex Legends developer corrected that oversight this week by adding "penalties for abandoning games" to its new Arenas mode. The early-week patch also increased the XP earned in Arenas on a temporary basis, while the dev team works to "offset the fact that the buy phase currently isn't being taken into account for 'survival time.'"

The patch also restored the slow on Wattson's fences and made a few adjustments to new legend Valkyrie, most notably adding input delay after triggering her ultimate so fat-fingered players (guilty!) didn't accidentally cancel it right after activation. A patch later in the week adjusted Valkyrie's hover ability so it consumes the same amount of fuel when she's using her tactical as when she isn't.

It also addressed an issue for Switch users who were getting disconnected due to system clock manipulation, for which Respawn apologized: "Sorry Animal Crossing time travelers! Go get your bells!"

You can check out both sets of patch notes below: