Apex Legends developers address K&M on consoles

[BlueAid]

Our stance on this? The short answer is: we don't condone it. We are investigating ways to detect if players are doing it that we're testing internally. That's all we have to say on it for now but we'll revisit this and talk about progress with detection and how we'll address players that are using it in the near future.

Wonder how they will address this. Currently even the smallest amount of SAB causes sprinting to be canceled. Hopefully there will be some workarounds if they implement any kind of detection system.

[Strykain]

In other words, they won't be doing anything about it. While Apex happens to be a massive hit, Respawn isn't known for making smart choices or actually doing things with their games.
This is mainly for all the people crying and whining on Twitter/Reddit about it, when in reality it's just a fall-back excuse for people.
It's amazing that if you go on Twitter or Reddit, you'll find just about everyone complaining assumes that literally 9 out of 10 games have a XIM user as the last team they are fighting.

[GamingNerd]

Blizzard said something similar to appease the M&K haters. But, they didn't do much to prevent or detect the use of M&K on their servers. So, I'd be surprised if they actually do something about it on Apex Legends. I don't know why gamers assume that us using M&K gives us some type of advantage. I'm struggling to make it to Diamond on Apex and I'm using it. There are but a hand full of us that are elite with M&K. And it's no different than a person being elite with a controller. Plus, there is this old saying that goes "if you can't beat them, join them." So if they really think it's that much of an issue no one's stopping them from purchasing the Xim so that they can see for themselves how hard it really is.

[OBsIV]

Currently even the smallest amount of SAB causes sprinting to be canceled.

SAB is still on even if it's at 0. What's the highest value you can go before it happens? I know why it's cancelling and I can address it if need be.

The problem Respawn is going to have is false positives and also blocking people with disabilities (even those not using a XIM but using other custom accessibility aides that are designed for their specific disability). Fortnite backed out their attempt in a week after we started seeing people with disabilities blocked. Perhaps Respawn believes that they are more capable than Epic, but, even if they did find a way to reliably detect a XIM (or even more, a XIM not being used by a disabled person), they will see that count is nothing compared to their total gaming population. Perhaps then they can then tell their community that every time they get outgunned it's most likely because of lack of skill.

[BlueAid]

Currently even the smallest amount of SAB causes sprinting to be canceled.

SAB is still on even if it's at 0. What's the highest value you can go before it happens? I know why it's cancelling and I can address it if need be.

The problem Respawn is going to have is false positives and also blocking people with disabilities (even those not using a XIM but using other custom accessibility aides that are designed for their specific disability). Fortnite backed out their attempt in a week after we started seeing people with disabilities blocked. Perhaps Respawn believes that they are more capable than Epic, but, even if they did find a way to reliably detect a XIM (or even more, a XIM not being used by a disabled person), they will see that count is nothing compared to their total gaming population. Perhaps then they can then tell their community that every time they get outgunned it's most likely because of lack of skill.

Lowest SAB value I've had it cancel was 4. This was on firmware 20190429 and manager 20190315 before SAB had additional options like Off. I agree as well that with such a small window for them to differentiate XIM users with controller users in regards to analog movement, they will likely have a good amount of false positives.

[Twoiwillie]

Does anyone know if it's possible for them to just detect the xim itself or does the xim completely make the Xbox think it's a controller?

[GamingNerd]

Currently even the smallest amount of SAB causes sprinting to be canceled.

SAB is still on even if it's at 0. What's the highest value you can go before it happens? I know why it's cancelling and I can address it if need be.

The problem Respawn is going to have is false positives and also blocking people with disabilities (even those not using a XIM but using other custom accessibility aides that are designed for their specific disability). Fortnite backed out their attempt in a week after we started seeing people with disabilities blocked. Perhaps Respawn believes that they are more capable than Epic, but, even if they did find a way to reliably detect a XIM (or even more, a XIM not being used by a disabled person), they will see that count is nothing compared to their total gaming population. Perhaps then they can then tell their community that every time they get outgunned it's most likely because of lack of skill.

Why does it cancel? I use an SAB value of 100 on Apex Legends. The run doesn't cancel but I can't slide when I try to slide in a heated battle. And it's not just only on 100, it also happens at 65. The way I avoid it when I remember is to slow down my keyboard inputs. But, it's hard to train myself to do that when I get ambushed. Maybe I'll lower the value and see if I can find something that doesn't cancel the slide.

[antithesis]

Both PS4 and Xbox One have licenced mouse & keyboard adapters. That's a big problem for Respawn.

[ceebs]

Our stance on this? The short answer is: we don't condone it. We are investigating ways to detect if players are doing it that we're testing internally. That's all we have to say on it for now but we'll revisit this and talk about progress with detection and how we'll address players that are using it in the near future.

Wonder how they will address this. Currently even the smallest amount of SAB causes sprinting to be canceled. Hopefully there will be some workarounds if they implement any kind of detection system.

Respawn are just appeasing.

 If asked whether or not they condone the use of KB&M on AL they’re going to to say they don’t. If they said they do, there’d be a very loud outcry from all the butt-hurt cretins who have no idea about the limitations of mouse and keyboard via a XIM. Their response just takes the heat off them.

After all, what are they going to do to stop KB&M on their upcoming Star Wars game? What did they do to stop it in their previous Titanfall games? Zip. Nada. Sweet F A. Which is exactly what they’ll do in Legends.

[thisisfantasea]

But the way they wrote how they will talk about 'progression with detection and how we'll address players that are using it in the near future' reads like they're trying to find a way on how to first find out if someone is using a XIM, and secondly if they are, how to address it. Do you think they will just match up keyboard and mouse players with other keyboard and mouse players only?

I have a feeling that's what they're going to do. Which will please the controller players, and annoy the keyboard and mouse players with very long loads times, very high level of competition as everyone will be using a keyboard and mouse and to make the XIM users switch over to controller or forever face long loads times and crazy insane matches.

Honestly I presume they're only addressing it never a high number of people who are very high in the ranks on ranked mode are using a XIM, so it's becoming an issue in their eyes.

Can my idea be implemented?

I hope not haha.

[ceebs]

They’ll look for digitised movement like Epic Games did.

OBsIV implemented SAB so that keyboard movement looks less digital and is harder to detect, but even then it can’t ever appear as completely analogue - a straight line will always be straight, even if it’s only straight for a few micrometers.

If Respawn kick players using digitised input devices then they’ll kick XIM players. But they’ll also kick players using Microsoft and Sony-licenced products and those used by disabled players. Until such time as they work out how to do the former without doing the latter, they’ll take no action. And as only a tiny percentage of players are using a XIM (OBsIV recons the number of XIMmers on Fortnite is significantly less that 1%) they’re extremely unlikely to use their limited resources to detect it (they need to sort out their netcode and hit detection issues, first!).

As I said, the devs are just appeasing the vocal XIM-haters. It’s just hot air. If Epic Games couldn’t do it with the all-conquering FN, poor little Respawn have a snowball’s chance in hell.

^{(But just incase, OBsIV always has a plan! )}

[Verone-]

@OBsIV

If you'd be on the other side, would you be able to do something against XIM users?

Just wondering 

[OBsIV]

@OBsIV

If you'd be on the other side, would you be able to do something against XIM users?

Just wondering 

SAB (and other things XIM does in this area that I haven't talked about) was designed first and foremost to behave like a controller and also include the inherent randomness that comes with it too without degrading the user's experience.

That said, I do look at the output and think about how I would identify patterns that would be completely reliable since the bar is very high -- you cannot be wrong under any circumstances since you will falsely detect controller users. Given their numbers, even if they were to be able to achieve a 99% detection rate, they will be falsely blocking thousands of their controller gamers.

I'm especially passionate about this because, as I've mentioned in other posts, I've gotten many mails from people with disabilities or parents of those with disabilities thanking me for XIM and how it's changed their or their kids lives. That they finally can be included into something like gaming. This is something that we all take for granted and I'm not going to let a bunch of whiners routinely place blame on XIM even though reality is they got killed by another controller player and they really aren't as good as they think they are.

[Strykain]

As I said before, Respawn isn't going to do anything about this. They did it solely to appease to the people crying and whining on the subreddit.

They gave their "Official response" on it, and that's as far as it's going to go.

[oxylus]

As the strike pack users sitting back laughing ha!