755: A look at the new Apex Legend “Seer”

Larry Hryb: Hi. It's Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson. Welcome to the show. Excited this week, because Jeff is out. Well, I'm not excited about that. Jeff is out. Rebecca is not available this week. And I've been teasing this for a couple of weeks. I have a very, very special guest, and I hope I didn't oversell it. I feel like it did. So, let me hit the button here. Ladies and gentlemen, you know him, you love him, Jack Pattillo. Jack, how are you?

Jack Pattillo: Hey, everybody. Welcome to your disappointments. That's right. I'm just Jack from Rooster Teeth Productions. Hi everyone. Thanks for having me on, Larry. I appreciate it.

Larry Hryb: My pleasure. A lot of people know you exactly from Rooster Teeth Productions. You've been around the games industry for as long as I have, right? 20 plus years. We've made a living out of this.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah, it's pretty wild. I got my start ... I was writing for a movie review website initially, and then I worked for a video game company called Aspire in Austin. And then ended up making friends with the Red vs. Blue guys, the Rooster Teeth guys. And then I met Burnie at a poker game, and then three months later, I was writing for them. And that was, jeez, 13 years ago. So, it's pretty wild how everything's gone, but-

Larry Hryb: It's funny, I-

Jack Pattillo: ... it's been good. It's good seeing you. I always bump into you at conventions. It is always like, "We got to grab lunch," but conventions are always the busiest we ever are. So, we never have a chance to.

Larry Hryb: And it's funny, because whenever ... You mentioned Burnie, who's a good .... Obviously, you work with Burnie, and Burnie is a good friend of mine and I've known Burnie a long time. Whenever I bring up Burnie, everybody asks me about the famous massage episode. Do you remember that story?

Jack Pattillo: I don't know. Maybe block blocked it out of my memory.

Larry Hryb: Oh, no. He was texting ... I was in his phone, and apparently his masseuse was named Larry. And he started texting me, setting up masseuse time. I'm like, "Sure. We can talk later about this."

Jack Pattillo: Nice, nice. Get extra friendly with him. Yeah, yeah.

Larry Hryb: Ask him about that. But anyway, it's good to see you. I'm going to have you on the show this week. We're going to talk ... Obviously you're on the show, talk about you. We're going to talk about what we're playing. We got some news later on. We've got an interview with Apex, but I want to talk about ... I can see it right there. You've got your very own podcast now. Let's talk about that.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah. So, Annual Pass is my new podcast. You were actually on one of my shows forever ago, Keeping the Lights On. And we went off on a tangent talking about theme parks, and this little nugget of an idea of doing a theme park podcast was always in the back of my head. And we finally went for it. We've got it up and running now. It's overall anywhere you get podcasts, but it's me and Geoff Ramsey, who's another Rooster Teeth creator. And the two of us talking about theme parks pretty much anywhere on the planet. Our dream is absolutely to eventually go to Japan. So, we actually use the #japanualpass.

Larry Hryb: Tell me about that. Why?

Jack Pattillo: Why? Because DisneySeas apparently is the greatest theme park on the planet. And so, my dream and my goal is to go there. Have you been there yet?

Larry Hryb: So, the answer's no, but yes, but no. And let me explain. Back in the late 2000s when I was going over to Tokyo all the time for Tokyo Game Show. So, 2006, '07, '08, '09, '10, '11. I was going over there, and if you've never been to Japan ... Jeff and I talk about it frequently, because Jeff on the show and he and I had been quite a bit, Jeff Rubenstein. And we stay in Tokyo proper. When I say Tokyo proper, I mean it's massive. We used to stay in the Shinjuku area.
And we would leave seven o'clock in the morning, go over, take a train from Shinjuku station to TokyoTransfer. Then it's like an hour and a half to two hours out. So, it was a full three-hour commute one way. And so, I finally remember you. I'm like, "You know what? We go by Tokyo Disneyland, and it's two stops more, we're at the convention center. Let's stay at Tokyo Disneyland." Now imagine trying to get that by the Microsoft corporate travel people going, "What are you doing?
So, I was able to swing it. And so, we stayed in Tokyo Disneyland, but we never got to the park. That's why I'm saying-

Jack Pattillo: Oh my God.

Larry Hryb: ... yes, but no, but yes.

Jack Pattillo: That's cruel. That is absolutely cruel. Going to the Shanghai parks, going to the Tokyo parks, that's a dream. I've been to Disneyland Paris, and it was a really weird thing, because actually, I worked at the Disney-MGM Studios now Disney Hollywood Studios in Orlando. I did the Walt Disney World College Program. And so, they have the Disney Studios Park in Paris is the secondary park in Paris. And it's basically a copy of the Orlando park, but nothing's in the right spot.
Everything's a little bit different and it's really off-putting, but you recognize things. Like they had Catastrophe Canyon there. They had Lights, Motors, Action! there. But I was like, "It's not where it's supposed to be." Anyway, but the Annual Pass though, it's a lot of fun. We release episodes every Thursday. And it's just me picking a specific attraction, going into depth on it and telling Geoff about it, because Geoff is a new theme park fan. Right before the pandemic hit, he went to Disneyland with his girlfriend, and his life changed.
And so now, he's super excited to learn more about theme parks. And we got to go to Universal Orlando and actually ride the VelociCoaster the day before it opened.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Jack Pattillo: And that was a blast. It was so crazy. Now we're trying to figure out stuff, but no-

Larry Hryb: I would love to come on-

Jack Pattillo: ... traveling right now again has become difficult.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, exactly. But seriously, I would love to come on, because I think I ... And this is not the Annual Pass podcast, but I think I said to you before we got on the air here, I've been to Disneyland and Disney World many times. I've had dinner at Club 33. I've been invited there. I've been into Walt's apartment right on the left-hand side, as you walk into Disneyland.

Jack Pattillo: Oh, wow.

Larry Hryb: So, I would love to. In fact, I wanted to show you this. This is something I'm proud of.

Jack Pattillo: I would love that.

Larry Hryb: This is something fun that I have. And I don't know if you could see this, but this is-

Jack Pattillo: Yeah, yeah.

Larry Hryb: My wife got this for me. Back in the day, before they had these all-day passes, you had to buy ticket books. And this was a rare ticket book from 1957 and '58 for Disneyland. And so, I have that framed in my home office here. I'm sorry. I wanted to show that.

Jack Pattillo: And I noticed on there too, there's no E ticket, because the first E ticket attractions, I believe were the Monorail and the Matterhorn, which we just did an episode on Matterhorn. So, you only see through [crosstalk].

Larry Hryb: Did you talk about the basketball court?

Jack Pattillo: We did, talked about the basketball court, the climbers when they get up there, when they get bored. Actually, I don't know if you've watched The Imagineering Story on Disney Plus. It's incredible. And they go into depth on that. So anyway, I could ramble on and on and on about theme parks and Disney and Universal and all that, but we should probably talk about some X-Box stuff. Right?

Larry Hryb: Well, first of all, welcome to the official Xbox podcast. We've got a bunch of stuff. What have you been playing lately? With all your theme park, and what have you been playing? I got to ask you that.

Jack Pattillo: Man, honestly, the most I've been playing of any game ... We're swamped right now with a bunch of stuff. The biggest thing I'm playing right now is Minecraft, honestly. We've just started up a brand new world in Minecraft where we have all the different legs of Rooster Teeth in the same server. And so, the idea is ... We have an Achievement Hunter area, we have an artsy animation area, we have an SDF area and then everyone's got a building on their own and their own little thing on this one, massive server. And then we'll have competitions. So, almost like Survivor where we can mix everyone together. And so-

Larry Hryb: Fun.

Jack Pattillo: ... you use mods and stuff and having a blast with it. But it's such a great game. A game like that, it never gets boring. You can always find new stuff. And especially in the modern community has been amazing too. And they add so many things to it, like the MCParks server. I don't know if you ever been on that, but there's actually a full fledged one-to-one theme park server that's awesome. You can go ride rides at Disney World. Anyway, again, I'm getting back to theme parks. I apologize.

Larry Hryb: No, that's quite all right. All roads lead to theme parks. It's interesting, because Rebecca, who's usually on the show who's off this week, she handles some of the PR for it. And to your point, there's always something to do, but they're always adding more as well. Right? There's always something going on, and Minecraft is one of those titles. I know in my neighborhood, all the parents will come up to me and say, "Is it okay if my kids play Minecraft? Because it's not really a game, right? And I'm, "No, it's not a game."

Jack Pattillo: It's virtual Lego is how I described it to my sister when her sons wanted to play. And so, they love it. And those guys [crosstalk].

Larry Hryb: It's a combination of virtual Lego, but also it's the modern sandbox. You and I, when we were growing up, we would go to the playground and learn. And if you get into a fight with somebody, you get kicked off the playground or something, but here you get kicked off a server. Right?

Jack Pattillo: It's true. That's true.

Larry Hryb: So, it's just the social constructs are just transferring over a little bit. I don't want to get too deep. So, you're playing Minecraft. That sounds great.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah. Much like when we were children running around with diamonds swords trying to kill each other, and Withers and whatnot. So, yeah. There's new Assassin's Creed DLCs coming out pretty soon from Valhalla. So, I'm looking to wrap up that story. And now, the rumors ... I guess they announced it finally, the new Assassin's Creed World or whatever they're building up. Sounds wild. I don't know. I dabble my hands in a little bit of everything. Right now, pressure washing simulator has been on the list of things that's ... Pretty much anything that's relaxing and peaceful is what I go for.

Larry Hryb: So, maybe what's not relaxing, what's not peaceful, did you play the Halo Infinite technical beta last weekend? Did you get a chance to play?

Jack Pattillo: I didn't, unfortunately.

Larry Hryb: Oh.

Jack Pattillo: My wife's 30th birthday fell over that window. And so, I was pretty much with her. We had friends come in from out of town, and so we spent all that time. And then I'm like, "Okay," and it's over. [crosstalk].

Larry Hryb: And we're done. End scene.

Jack Pattillo: That's okay. I'm going to dive in head first when I can get my hands on that again.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. So, that was a lot of fun for those of you ... It was interesting, because they tweak the playlist. So, sometimes you're playing against bots, sometimes your PvP. And I was really excited, because Friday night I got in there, and I think I got 18 or 20 of the 50 kills. And I was feeling pretty good, Jack. Turns out those were recruit or scout level bots. And then Sunday night I played against the Spartan bots, and it was bloody. I think I got one kill. But yeah, the game felt real good.

Jack Pattillo: I'm pretty garbage when it comes to PvP. So, any time it's me versus another human, unless it's Grifball. Grifball, I'm actually pretty happy with. But you put a gun in my hands, I have no business being out on the field.

Larry Hryb: Grifball, that's such a classic callback. That was one of the greatest things. You guys work on so much fun, and that was such an organic, lovely surprise that came out of Rooster Teeth, right?

Jack Pattillo: Yeah. It was a video called DIY. It was the the launch of ... Forge was in Halo 3, right?

Larry Hryb: I think it was 3, yeah.

Jack Pattillo: So, in Forge and Halo 3, there was a map. It was like a big open world. And so, the guys made this map, and it was like, "Oh, let's make a sport out of this." And you can do modifiers. So, anytime someone grabs the ball, they go-

Larry Hryb: Busted.

Jack Pattillo: ... orange. And then you have to kill that person. And there's hammers and swords. And they've developed a new thing that's official, is like Cannon as part of the game, which is absolutely crazy. But aside from ... I drifted away from before the whole passing came into play.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jack Pattillo: But I can still handle myself pretty decently with a hammer and sword and playing some Grifball, but-

Larry Hryb: You can still [crosstalk].

Jack Pattillo: ... other than that. No.

Larry Hryb: I got to play ... I'm looking forward to seeing how that comes back, but what else do we have? I've been playing a little bit ... Have you played Hades? Hades on the console is out. In fact, it's coming to Game Pass this month. I got a chance to play it a little earlier.

Jack Pattillo: I've had so many people tell me to check it out, but I haven't gotten a chance to actually play it myself. So, I'm woefully behind.

Larry Hryb: Playing that. I'm playing Death's Door, which is also, I'm into The Ascent, which we had an interview last week is out this week. It's just crazy. And then of course, we talked a little bit about Apex. Were you ever an Apex Legends person?

Jack Pattillo: Man, I liked Apex, because Lifeline was great. I love being the healer. That's always my jam. That's always my go-to. I was Mercy in Overwatch. And anytime I can be a healer, I'm down-

Larry Hryb: So, you're support class.

Jack Pattillo: Exactly. You put a gun in my hand, I got nothing, but you give me a syringe or you give me some paddles, like, "Okay, okay. Maybe I can do some work and help someone who's better than me." But even like, I remember, God, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the medic class in that was the best medic class ever. And I'm hoping now with Battlefield Portal, I think is what it is, that maybe ... I saw the paddles versus knife thing, and I'm like, "Okay, maybe there's something there. Maybe I can actually jump back in and do some work."

Larry Hryb: It's funny. We had an interview a couple of weeks ago with the team from Battlefield about Portal, which for those of you that don't know, it's their version, if you play Halo, it's like Forge, but not really. You can set up rules and things like that. So, it's a different take on it, but it allows you to customize it based on what the community does. So, I guess I'm going to say right now, Jack. Talk to Geoff. I want some Grifball in there.

Jack Pattillo: Man. Battlefield Grifball. I ain't know how that would work.

Larry Hryb: Right, right?

Jack Pattillo: That'd be crazy though, because Grifball is typically 4v4. So, I wonder if you could do just like 30v30. Get silly with it. That would be-

Larry Hryb: Or 30v30 of tanks versus tree or something. Ridiculous.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a blast.

Larry Hryb: But anyway, playing that. So, we got the interview with Apex. So, why don't we take a break now. We'll roll that interview. And then, do you have some time to stay with us on the other side, we'll talk news and so forth?

Jack Pattillo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going anywhere.

Larry Hryb: Okay. I promise, we're going to go do this interview. When we come back, Jack will be here. He will not be on an attraction. I promise. I hope. Okay. Here we go.

Jack Pattillo: Well, maybe, maybe.

Larry Hryb: As anybody that's tuned in knows, I am a huge Apex Legends fan, and I'm very excited to have joining me on the show today, Steven Ferreira and Travis Nordin. You guys are a welcome. Welcome to the show.

Steven Ferreira: Thanks very much. Thanks for having us.

Larry Hryb: Now I want to talk a little bit about what you do, because Steven, you're the Uber guy, but Travis is the man behind the brand new Legend. So, we're going to talk about that in a minute as well, but tell us a little bit about your roles. I told everybody, but tell us a little bit more about them.

Steven Ferreira: Sure. Yeah. As the team director, my job is really just to help all the really talented people make Apex what it is. And so, as long as I don't get in the way and I keep supporting the team with whatever they need, then I know I'm doing my job.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. We call that management overhead.

Steven Ferreira: Yeah. That's right. That's right.

Larry Hryb: And Travis, tell us about your role there. Because as I said just a moment ago, you were responsible for the new hero.

Travis Nordin: Yeah. So, I'm a game plan engineer, I guess, slash designer. So, I actually did the design for the character, but then also the programming for him as well. So, very exciting to have Seer launch.

Larry Hryb: Tell us a little bit about what you worked on before Seer, because obviously he's a newer legend. So, didn't just waltz in and start working on that. But what are some of the other areas we can see your fingerprints on in the game?

Travis Nordin: So Seer, actually, I started him pretty early on when I joined the team, but I worked off and on, on him. I did the original prototype for the new Rampage LMG way back in the day. I helped out with some of the map stuff that we saw in Season 8. And then after that came out, it was full-time on Seer and just nailing down the gameplay, finding the fun and all that good stuff.

Larry Hryb: So, tell us about what his abilities are and how he fits into the gameplay narrative and how he fits into the meta.

Travis Nordin: Sure. So, he is a recon legend. So, there's definitely some similarities between other recon legends like Bloodhound and even Crypto to an extent. His passive is the heartbeat sensor. So, when he goes into ADS, he can detect enemy heartbeats like in his report and get indications with a UI element in terms of where the enemies are. That UI will actually fill into if his tactical would land at that moment. So, the passive is really tied in closely to the tactical.
And you saw those kind of drones that he was controlling there. As the tactical goes, he summons them out into this cylinder in front of him. And it's a bit of a short delay, but after that, it'll go off and it'll scan enemies and actually repeal their health bars, which is a first for a recon legend and do an interrupt, which is also new. So, if someone is popping a shield battery, reviving their friend, you can actually interrupt that as Seer. And there you can see the tactical here.

Larry Hryb: That's a really cool design as well, the focus of attention. I was noticing that when I was playing a little bit last evening. It's a neat design and it carries over to his ultimate, which is very cool. And I'm sure we'll see that in a minute, because it's really cool. Explain how that works.

Travis Nordin: Yeah. So, he's got this heart chamber that you see him pulling it out and he throws it and then when it lands, it summons this net sphere of-

Larry Hryb: There it is.

Travis Nordin: ... micro drones. Yeah. There it is there. And then anyone who is moving faster than a crouch lock or firing their weapon. You'll see those little footprint VFX that reveal their location. So, there is some counter play where if you're not moving, you're not revealed, or if you're crouch walking, you won't be revealed either. But it's interesting to ... The fight breaks out, you throw that down and you can get a real read on the battlefield of who's where, and also you can set up your tactical [crosstalk].

Larry Hryb: Now, when you're using Seer's ultimate, your opponents can see that dome. Correct?

Travis Nordin: They can see the dome, yep. And it can actually shoot that heart chamber at the middle to destroy it. So, as a Seer, you want to be careful where you throw that. If you throw it right into the open, it's probably going to get taken down pretty quickly.

Larry Hryb: Pro tip there. It's a nifty design. Like I say, I played with them a little bit last night and he's got some nice feel to it. How has it been? I know it's only been out this week. It dropped this week. It's now available. How's the reception been?

Travis Nordin: So far so good. He definitely brings some new and interesting stuff to the game. And there's chatter that he's really strong, he's overpowered, all that kind of stuff, but he's been popular, which has been cool. I put out a tweet yesterday saying, "Welcome to Emergence, and happy launch everything." Got a lot of positive replies and stuff like, "Oh, I love the character. Great job," and stuff. So, it was just really awesome to hear.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. I was looking through the conversations last night, and that's exactly what I was seeing. I want to talk a little bit about this season and what you guys have done for this season. So, I don't know who the best person is to talk about that. So, who would that be?

Steven Ferreira: We'll jump back and forth, depending on what it is. Go ahead.

Larry Hryb: So, who-

Steven Ferreira: Sorry. What specifically about the season do you want to touch on?

Larry Hryb: I want to talk a little bit about what you guys have done for the season? What are some of the new things and what are some of the tweaks that you've learned from the past few seasons?

Steven Ferreira: Right. Got you. Well, I think every season, we're learning, right? That's one of the great things about a live game is that we don't have to wait long to find out what's happening, whether it's by looking at the data from the game or listening to the community or bringing players in to do internal play tests. We're constantly looking at the game and seeing what we can change. And as we introduce new elements to the game each season, it really, by nature, shifts the meta quite a lot that we have to always be adjusting, because we're adding things to the game.
So, season to season, you see some of the similar things that we drop, and this season's not really any different in that regard. Seer as a new legend coming into the game means that we shift around what we expect to see in terms of pro-play meta with characters, but also in more casual play with the new map. That's always a very big one. And that's one of the ones that we really try to adapt to how it's being played to date. So, we're pretty excited about the changes to World's Edge.
We got a couple of big changes going on there, mostly in the north end of the map. So, that was one of the big themes for this season was trying to get more the drops being spread out a little bit more and using more of the map. That's one of the advantages that World's Edge actually has, is the size of the amount of POIs. But we noticed that some of the areas aren't used as much as others. So, particularly the north. So where we used to have refinery, we actually changed that POI out and replaced it with Climatizer, which has a much larger POI. It has a lot more loot.
It has a very different type of gameplay experience there than was there before with the type of buildings and structures and landscape. It's much more separated now, because if you remember the fissure that broke up a fragment and created that big separation?

Larry Hryb: Yep.

Steven Ferreira: That's now extended all the way to the north end of the map. So, we have that same kind of separation gameplay, but we've added a new element to it this season, which is similar to what we had when we introduced World's Edge with more dynamic movement in the train, we've done the same thing with gondolas specifically for the new POIs. So, you use these gondolas to traverse the big gaps that are created by the fissures, and that creates more of a spaced out type experience in those POIs, given that they're much bigger as well. So, that fissure extends, like I said, down from its origins in the center of the map, up to the north.
And then when we get to the center of the map, one of the other big changes that we had, one of the longstanding popular POIs has been there from the beginning of World's Edge, Sorting Factory, we've replaced that with Lava Siphon. So, the idea is that, World's Edge is coming apart. We're pushing it to the extremes. It's starting to really, really crumble at this point. And so, Lava Siphon is just one more attempt to try and keep things together. And so, that POI has a similar style gameplay to what you see in Climatizer, and that it's separated by a giant lava pool.
It's got gondolas connecting the different buildings across that POI. And again, that was already a large POI, so it already had a lot of space for a lot of squads to drop, but it's a very different play experience that you're going to get in there now. Along with that, there's a couple other smaller changes that we made. One was around Train Yard. So, Train Yard's always been something of a peculiar POI-

Larry Hryb: To say the least.

Steven Ferreira: ... in the game. Yes. There's obviously a lot of vertical gameplay. Even though it's not super big, the way it's laid out and the way that you have views into that POI, it's really easy for there to be a lot of squads to end up there and constantly churn and get third-partied in that space. And so, it becomes somewhat of a fortress to hold and keep getting churned over. So, we wanted to clean that up a little bit and remove some of the frustration that we've heard players talk about there for some time.
And so, we've cleaned that out. And as part of the destruction of World's Edge and the instability you saw maybe in the teasers, the rumblings happening in the different loading screens and things like that, part of that earthquake ends up leveling out Train Yard. So, it's a similar POI in that it retained some of the same elements, but it's a little bit streamlined and cleaned up. Aside from that, we always try to change and make it more efficient for how people move from POI to POI in the maps. So, there's a couple of small changes that we've made about how you rotate around the map as well. But that's a big one for us.

Larry Hryb: It's interesting you brought up ... One of my favorite drops has always been Sorting Factory, because I just always love the verticality of it and there's just enough ... You can easily drop over the side of the cliff if you run into too many problems. The train used to come through there. So, I'm going to be very interested to check that out, but that was always, always one of my favorite spots. You said something right at the beginning there that was very interesting. And I think a lot of folks ...
Maybe they know this, maybe they don't, but because it's a live game, you guys are constantly updating it and it's connected and you can see the data and matchmaking, but you're able to look at the heat maps. I know that we used to call them when I was working on some of the Halo titles, it was the heat maps. So, you could see ... And that's more of a map of, "During all of these matches, here's where a lot of the people are having these interactions." And it's interesting, because I assume you have the same thing and you're able to look at that. And that's why you made those changes for the north end of the map, because your heat map was probably pretty cold up there.

Steven Ferreira: Yes. Yeah. Which thematically actually makes sense, since we also increased the amount of snow on that side of the map. We dialed up the ice and fire for the map overall as well. But definitely, that's one of many kinds of data points that we use to figure out what we want to do next. And there's a lot of different inputs and a lot of it is also just creatively what the team is interested. They've got an idea, and it'll fit nicely into a certain area. And so, all of those things are obviously taken into account.
And then the outcome is what you're seeing in Emergence, which I think it's pretty awesome. I'm loving playing it, and I'm excited to see everyone jump in there this week.

Larry Hryb: It looks amazing, but I'm looking forward ... I had a little bit of time with it last night. I need to spend a lot more time with it now. It's available now. Travis, I want to talk to you about the ... You mentioned it a moment ago when you were working on Seer, the Rampage LMG. And I don't have that video available right now, but tell us a little bit about what this LMG is all about.

Travis Nordin: Yeah. So, Rampage LMG is another heavy ammo LMG. The Spitfire has been moved to the care package for the season. Obviously, very strong weapon last season. So, that's been moved there. Made room for the rampage to come around the ground loot. It's our slowest rate of fire, LMG. So, it's got a really satisfying cadence to it. So, your mid range LMG. I think up-close you're going to get a Niner, Revolt or something, a bit faster firing. But it does have this unique mechanic where you can actually take a thermite grenade and put it into the rampage to increase the rate of fire.
So, it's got this cool animation opens up. Stick that in there. Like the Sentinel, can get charged by the shield batteries. And then the rate of fire goes up significantly. So, the play pattern I like to do is poke from a far with it. And then if they retreat into a building, run up, pop in the thermite grenade. And then you're better suited for a closer range engagement there.

Larry Hryb: Essentially to see that the Spitfire's been moved to the care package, how do you guys think about moving the various weapons and objects in and out of the care packages from season to season? That must be quite the contentious discussion around the office.

Steven Ferreira: Yeah. That's one of the things that I think obviously we have dedicated teams on each area of the game. And so, there's a group of folks who are specialized in looking at the weapon meta and making those types of decisions, but everybody's got an opinion when it comes to weapons, right? Everybody's got-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Steven Ferreira: ... a favorite. Everybody's got thoughts on how it should work. And so, spicy conversations definitely happen in the studio around that. But I think there's a lot ... Again, like everything else, some of it comes into looking at the data and seeing that, okay, you know what? We've made some changes in the past. This has been a little bit, too powerful, or not powerful enough, and we're trying to balance it out and make sure that every weapon has a good use. Not every weapon needs to be the best weapon for the entire game.
Some weapons are better suited for early games. Some are better suited for late games. Some are for certain play styles. Obviously, we want to make sure we have that variety. And so, the team's always trying to balance that out. Some weapons have just been around and become a long standby, and they develop their own meta around themselves that gets ingrained. And we want to make sure that we're shaking that up and keeping it fresh all the time. So, a lot that goes into those decisions as to what goes in, what goes out.

Larry Hryb: Like the Mozambique.

Steven Ferreira: Yes.

Larry Hryb: I want to talk a little bit about Arenas before I let you go, because we've got ranked Arenas now. And I want to see if I could learn a little bit more about that, because that sounds interesting, because that's the first time ever, right Steven?

Steven Ferreira: It is. Yeah. We introduced Arenas last season and it was quite a big learning experience for us. Obviously over the last two years with Apex, we've done a lot with different modes, but mostly as limited time modes. And so, we tried a lot of things and learned a lot of things in that process. And Arenas was really the first attempt at trying to do something that was a permanent mode. And so, we learned a lot last season and we wanted to hold off before we brought a ranked version of it out, so that we could iron out some of the kinks and make sure that we had a stable foundation to put ranked on top of.
And so that's what we've got this season with Emergence. And so, we've introduced Ranked, which should be pretty familiar to Apex players who've played the BR ranked mode, but there are some differences to it. So, obviously bringing in our own rotation of Arenas maps that interact. We're going to be ... There's a new set of maps, one arena per map that fits into rotation on top of the arena-specific maps that we've already seen to date. But one of the bigger things that we've got is the way that we do the matchmaking.
So unlike the BR, when you first jump into Arenas Ranked, you're going to have a seeding system where you're going to play a round of 10 matches that are going to allow us to really make sure that those first matches actually place people into the right positions. Because we don't have anything to go off of, because it is a brand new mode. And so, you're going to go into those first 10 seeding matches, and that's going to really establish the beginning of your MMR, which is going to be separate from your season rank.
So, as you try to get up to silver, gold, predator, et cetera, that's going to be detached from your actual MMR, which will fluctuate separately to make sure that we always got even and compelling matches for everybody and that there's actually a challenge and a good experience being retained. That doesn't impact what your rank is. The other thing with the ranked system is that it will maintain your highest peak rank. So, if you were to come up to predator, but then drop down, you earn based off of what your highest goal setting is, not what you're currently at, at the end of the season.
And to that point, there's no split mid season like there is in BR, so there's no reset halfway through. It's just for the entirety of the season, you'll see how far you can get in the rank system.

Larry Hryb: Well, everything we've talked about is now available in Apex Legends. I want to thank you guys. Travis, thank you for all your work on Seer and the LMG. Appreciate that. I also want to say, Steven, thank you very much for all your work there, getting the team together and get them all focused. Appreciate all the work you guys are doing. Any final words before I let you go, Steven?

Steven Ferreira: I just hope everybody enjoys jumping into emergence and we can't wait to get in there with you guys.

Larry Hryb: All right. Travis, what about you? Anything before we let you go?

Travis Nordin: No, just same sentiments. Yeah, I'm really excited for those launch versions and hope everyone enjoys Seer and playing it.

Larry Hryb: All right. Thank you to my guests. Apex is huge. Still love playing it, Jack. Maybe we should play sometime.

Jack Pattillo: You don't want me on your squad.

Larry Hryb: Oh, stop.

Jack Pattillo: I appreciate the offer. Maybe I'll bring you back to life a couple of times, but that's about all I got.

Larry Hryb: I tell you, it's funny, we got a little bit of news here. Let's see if I can find where it is here, because we've got some nifty stuff going on. I don't know if you've seen this. I've got a video to show this, because this is actually pretty cool. So, let me go ahead and roll this in here. And you will see that this week, we announced for Halo fans, if you use Waze on your mobile device, you will get directions from Master Chief. Check this out, right? Wow. This is the fun part right here. Take the second exit. Yes. Getting close.
There's no escape. There's no escape. Anyway, that's for Halo Infinite. And you can see it. You can go over to news.xbox.com, and you can check that out. Thanks to the Waze guys for making us that little clip there, but you can drive in the Warthog or Ghost, it's nifty. Get ready for Halo.

Jack Pattillo: Yo man, we're going to McDonald's. We're going in.

Larry Hryb: That's awesome. I love [crosstalk]. Oh, yes. It's funny. Steve Downes, who's the voice of Master Chief who you've just heard, I haven't chatted with him in a while I think since Halo 4. It's been a while. He's an amazing voice radio guy from Chicago, for those of you that don't know.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah. It's so funny when you see those unassuming voice actors, where you wouldn't give them a second glance on the street. And then you hear their voice, and you're like, "Oh my gosh," like the gentlemen who does the voice work for the ... The announcer for Halo, the Overkill. That dude seems like someone's nice grandpa, but then he drops the voice and it's like, "That's the guy. I've been listening to him my whole life."

Larry Hryb: Do the voice. It's interesting, because people say that I have a good voice, and I don't think so. But I remember ... You know who told me I had a good voice, Jack, that I was blown away by it?

Jack Pattillo: Who's that?

Larry Hryb: I was doing an event for the Assassin's Creed movie. And I was hosting it, and all of the stars of Assassin's Creed were there. And it was an amazing time. And sitting to my left was Jeremy Irons, Scar.

Jack Pattillo: Oh no. Oh, he's got a great voice. Oh my gosh.

Larry Hryb: Right. And we were practicing, and I was doing my opening or doing the, "Hi. I'm Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson," and he says, "Oh my, you have quite the voice." And I was like, "Scar just said that."

Jack Pattillo: That's so cool. Now, see, I've been told I have a face for radio. So, that worked out for me where, up until recently-

Larry Hryb: Same here.

Jack Pattillo: ... it's been my voice the whole time. So, that's a-

Larry Hryb: Anyways, a couple of other things we got coming in here. Let's see if I've got the ... Do I have this all queued up? Yeah, I do. We have ... Have you seen this? This is a brand new controller. This is the Aqua Shift Special Edition.

Jack Pattillo: Oh, look at those grips on the back. They look so cool.

Larry Hryb: [crosstalk]. This is exactly ... Here's the close-up of that front there. So, take a look at that. That's pretty. It's got a nice shimmer to it. It's got a color shifting-

Jack Pattillo: It's painted like a boat. I love it.

Larry Hryb: You know what? I'm going to let the design team know that Jack says, "It's painted like a boat." That'll be the back of box quote.

Jack Pattillo: That shimmery metallic blue. And I love the buttons too. I love that the letters are all the same color, that they're dark blue. That's really cool.

Larry Hryb: Take a look at that. That's cool. So, that's going to be available.

Jack Pattillo: I got to say, if you get on the horn with the design team, ask them, when can we get more Elites? There's no special addition Elite Controllers. I have so many Elite Controllers, because that's all I play with. I use the paddles for my thumb sticks. And I've got my Elite right here, close by.

Larry Hryb: We both do.

Jack Pattillo: I love this thing. Because with someone like us, we play video games for a living, and these are essentially our tools. So, you want to have the best tool you possibly can. And ever since the first Elite came out, I can't imagine playing on anything else. We get the white one and we get the black one, but give me a shiny blue one. I want [crosstalk].

Larry Hryb: I will let them know.

Jack Pattillo: I'm rambling now. Thank you very much.

Larry Hryb: I will let them know. This is not a product announcement. This is a product request. So, I'll be sure to let them know. It's funny, because we're talking about Halo. In Halo, in Infinite in the beta, at least ... I don't know if it's going to be like this in the final version, but you had to hit up on the D-pad to mark. You can mark that there's an enemy there. So, you've got to map that to underneath, because you don't want to be going down with the D-pad.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah. The first thing I do is I take the big fat paddles on the back and I make those my click-in, my thumbs stick clicks, because I can't do a straight down click. I always end up drifting a little bit. And so, if I'm aiming, I'll start drifting away. So I'm like, "Nope. Put it on the paddles," and that's done, the best thing to do.

Larry Hryb: Done, done. Let's see what else we have. Hey, by the way we did ... I don't know if you saw this. We did the NPC Awards last week. We did a partnership with Ryan Reynolds and the movie, Free Guy. So, here's the promotional part of our podcast that I have to do some housekeeping here, Jack. So, bear with me.

Jack Pattillo: I'll stay here. A friend of mine's in Free Guy, actually.

Larry Hryb: Oh, really? Do we know him or her?

Jack Pattillo: LazarBeam is actually in free guys. So, I don't know, but apparently he's in the movie. LazarBeam, he's an Australian YouTuber. Lannan's his name? Super nice guy. He was a fan of Rooster Teeth. Came, visited us in Austin went, "Oh, I can do this." And then went to Australia, started a YouTube channel, and now he's the largest YouTuber in all of Australia.

Larry Hryb: That's the way it works.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah. Super nice guy.

Larry Hryb: But the winner for the NPC Awards was Samuel Hayden from Doom. And Doom Eternal was voted the fan favorite NPC. The runner up was Guy from played by Ryan Reynolds, which I don't know if that was a runner up or was it a courtesy award? Anyway. So, Free Guy, it's coming .. When is it? August 13th. So, it's coming up very soon. So, thank you everybody who voted for that.

Jack Pattillo: Next week. I'm excited for that one.

Larry Hryb: Oh, August is flying by. I'll tell you that. Most people are on holiday, like Jeff and Rebecca from this show. Me, no. You, no. We're still working. We are still working. Let's see what else we got-

Jack Pattillo: [crosstalk] in this room.

Larry Hryb: This is actually really ... Actually, what do you play ... What do you have for your main display for playing?

Jack Pattillo: I have an Asus 1440p 185 something. It's-

Larry Hryb: I'm talking about, in your living room, what do you play on there? Do you play on OLED or?

Jack Pattillo: Oh. No, I just have an old school 4K TV. It's not an OLED. I haven't stepped up to that level yet. So-

Larry Hryb: Got it.

Jack Pattillo: It's nice though. It's good. I think like 65 Inch.

Larry Hryb: Oh, okay. No, that's fine. The reason I asked is because there's this product that Samsung makes called ... And then Samsung is an official partner for Series X in the US and Canada. They have this cool TV, and it's for The Frame. And what we're doing is ... This is actually pretty interesting. Take a look at this. So, this is ... For the 20th anniversary, we've loaded some of the ... Is this going to play here or not? Yeah, I guess it will. Here we go. We've loaded some iconic imagery from Xbox.
So in joining in the Xbox's 20th anniversary celebration, we've collaborated with Samsung for an Xbox through the years' collection of iconic gamer orc, which are available exclusively through The Frame Art Store. And you can check that out. It's a beautiful TV with customizable bezels, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, it's-

Jack Pattillo: I think I have seen this TV. So basically when it's off, it's doing a slide show. It's not just black, right?

Larry Hryb: Exactly. When the TV is off, it goes through and it just cycles through them. So, that's what it looks like. That's amazing. So, we've got Halo ... These are just a few of them; BioShock, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. If you're one of the lucky people that have a frame, you can find these 4K images in The Frame Art Store at no additional cost. And if you want to frame TV, check out samsung.com. So, there you go.

Jack Pattillo: I'm just saying, Samsung, I got this big gap above my head right now. I moved some stuff around, so if you need to fill something-

Larry Hryb: There you go. There you go. Now full screen. There you go now.

Jack Pattillo: See, there you go. So, back there. I moved my Falcon over, and I've got some other Lego stuff that I moved. So, I have room now. Just saying.

Larry Hryb: All right. All right.

Jack Pattillo: Good spot for a TV.

Larry Hryb: We could have put it over here, but anyway, we're done with that. Let's get back to you and I. So, let's see. What else we have for news is, you know what? And I know you're a fan Jack-

Jack Pattillo: I'm a fan.

Larry Hryb: ... of Game Pass.

Jack Pattillo: Ooh, Game Pass. Larry, right there, biggest game of all time. You can see with your own eyes, the Microsoft Solitaire Collection. I've been-

Larry Hryb: Okay, [crosstalk].

Jack Pattillo: ... waiting to play that. I love me some solitaire. Actually, for what it's worth, Skate and Skate 3, I love me some Skate Coming from the EA Play as well. And Hades. These guys got Hades. That's the hotness. Right? Everyone loves some Hades.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. In fact, I've been playing it. I got early access to it, and it's what people ... It was game of the year last year on many categories. At one, it was a runner up for many levels. And Greg who runs that studio over there ... I need to get Greg on and I think Felicia Day. You know Felicia.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We run in similar circles.

Larry Hryb: We all run in similar nerd gaming circles. Don't we?

Jack Pattillo: Yeah. It's one of those things where even if you have never properly met someone, you're still like, "Oh yeah. Hey." You feel you know them, because, "Oh, you've been through similar things that we have. You've been making media on the internet now for two decades." So it's like, "Okay. Yeah, I get you."

Larry Hryb: Has it been that long? Has it been that long?

Jack Pattillo: Feels like it.

Larry Hryb: It sure feels like-

Jack Pattillo: Feels like it.

Larry Hryb: ... it's crazy. Anyway, so that's Game Pass. A lot of cool Game Pass titles coming up. Go to news.xbox.com if you want to check those out, or you can just head over to my blog at Major Nelson, or you can just follow me on Twitter or follow Jack on Twitter as well. Right? Jack P.

Jack Pattillo: That's true. Jack_P. For the longest time I tried to get @Jack, and I just was like, "Why I can't get @Jack?" And it's like, oh, @Jack is the guy who made Twitter. Oops. Okay.

Larry Hryb: That's not [crosstalk].

Jack Pattillo: I have a bone to pick with you and all your friends at Microsoft.

Larry Hryb: Oh-oh.

Jack Pattillo: Okay. So-

Larry Hryb: Who wants the Jack gamer tag? Is that what this is about?

Jack Pattillo: That's exactly what this is about. So, for the longest time, my gamer tag was Monkey 5225, which 5225 is my name on a phone pad. And so, I was like, "Monkey, whatever." And then the thing popped up and said, "You could change your gamers tag." It's like, "You can change your gamer tag. Cool." And so, I wanted to get Jack. And I was like, "Okay." And Jack was a dead account. No one had used it. Someone registered it and never used it. And I was sitting there, I was messaging him, "Listen, I'll give you a couple hundred bucks. Let me have this name." Nothing, nothing, nothing. And there's no response.
And then I would check it about once a quarter. And then one day, full gamer tag, loads of stuff on it. And it was a Microsoft employee who worked on the NXE for the Xbox 360. So, they had the next dashboard experience and everything. So, someone at Microsoft jumped on, took the account. And I was like, curses.

Larry Hryb: I wonder who has that. I think I may know who has that.

Jack Pattillo: [crosstalk].

Larry Hryb: I think I may know who has that.

Jack Pattillo: But I have Jack P now on Xbox. So, that's good. So, I have a decent gamer tag, but still it's not just Jack. It's not just Jack. [crosstalk].

Larry Hryb: Do you have another than Jack P? You don't have to give it out now. Do you have an alt tag, as we like to say in the biz?

Jack Pattillo: Not really. I have various emails that I use, but as far as actual gamer tag, no, because it's all about the gamer score. You want that big number, so why would you change it?

Larry Hryb: Just asking. Just asking.

Jack Pattillo: Do you have some Smurf accounts, you're jumping in and playing some-

Larry Hryb: I do have separate accounts that I play games that aren't released under, because you have to remember, with Xbox ... Let's take a look at it. See if I can pull it up here. I don't know how many people I have following me, Jack. Let's take a look. So, we'll take a ... Doesn't that look lovely? Let's take a look here, and we will see-

Jack Pattillo: That's so pretty.

Larry Hryb: So the problem is, Jack, I've got seven million, six hundred and-

Jack Pattillo: 7.6 million people? That's-

Larry Hryb: Right. So when I play something, people notice. And so, I'm very careful about that when I have access ... Yes, go ahead.

Jack Pattillo: I was going to say, if you go back to that frame right there, you can see the little tag you have, the launch team, new X-Box experience, that's what I lost mine. It's Jack.

Larry Hryb: Those are all the things in the lower left-hand side. You can see I launched Scorpio, Xbox 360 ... Doesn't matter. You don't want to see me.

Jack Pattillo: It hurts. It hurts. Anyway, sorry. Just rubbing salt in the wound now, Larry.

Larry Hryb: I guess we should talk about something else. Want to talk about a rollercoaster maybe?

Jack Pattillo: Yeah, sure. Let's talk about rollercoaster. Talking about theme parks, I got all my maps here as well. I've been collecting those. I have so many ... I started scanning in maps, because I've just been collecting theme park maps, and I just have a flatbed scanner. And after about two hours of scanning maps nonstop, I realized I was about a third of the way done. And I'm like, "Oh my God, I have so much more to get to that [crosstalk]."

Larry Hryb: You need an intern or something to do that, right?

Jack Pattillo: I need an intern, but I can't pay. I can't pay right now.

Larry Hryb: Right. I get it. I get it.

Jack Pattillo: I'm not into the whole free intern thing. If you work, you should earn something for it.

Larry Hryb: Absolutely, absolutely. I have some of those ... You and I were talking before we started recording. I've got a bunch of those maps, because I'm a cartography nerd. I have a feeling ... I don't know. I just feel like in some other life, a long time ago, I was a map person, a cartographer or something, because I just look at maps ... This is a true story. When I was up, when you're a little kid, you put stuff on your walls, and I had maps on my walls. And one of the greatest maps I ever had, I think my mom got it for me.
It was from a national geographic and it was a map of the moon. And I'll never forget it, because you opened it up and I think it had the dark and the light side of the moon. And I was like, "This as a map of another planet." It was. So, I thought that was the coolest map ever.

Jack Pattillo: That's so cool. Well, they're building the Starship down at [inaudible]. So, people are going to be onto the moon [inaudible] soil on the moon.

Larry Hryb: Are you going to plan on going up there? Is that what you're going to do?

Jack Pattillo: Man, I don't know. Maybe. I've got a lot of animals though, that I feel bad if I left them behind. So, yeah. We'll see. Am I cutting out. Am I cutting out?

Larry Hryb: Yeah. You're cutting out a little bit. Are they doing some high-speed internet testing over there?

Jack Pattillo: I don't know what's going ... I don't know. [inaudible]. No one's uploading anything right now.

Larry Hryb: Oh my goodness. Anyway-

Jack Pattillo: What time is it? Two o'clock. Yeah. Who knows?

Larry Hryb: It's upload time. You know what, Jack? Maybe this is a good time that we wrap up. Let's go ahead and plug your show, the Annual Pass a little bit more. Tell people where they can find it, and then I'll let you go, if they can hear you.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. If I'm still here. If I still exist. I don't know if you can still see me in the frames. Annual Pass is available anywhere you get your podcasts. It's on all the different things. It's also over on Rooster Teeth. If you want to go to Rooster Teeth, you can check it out there. Every single week, I ask a question of the community who listens, and I give away a park map signed by myself and Geoff Ramsey. So, yeah. Go over, check it out, listen to it and spread the love and the positivity that comes with theme parks, and let me keep doing my show. So, thank you very much, Larry, for having me on.

Larry Hryb: Oh, Jack, I got to tell you, it's such a great ... I want to come on your show. I've got tons of theme park stories to share. I'm not going to overstay my welcome, but I think I've got enough for maybe more than one episode. I'll just say that.

Jack Pattillo: Oh, wow. Okay. Well, we'll start with one and see how it goes from there.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. Well, it's up to the audience, but I'd also love to see Geoff. I haven't seen Geoff in forever.

Jack Pattillo: Oh man. Yeah, it's been ... You came on our show. You came on Keeping the Lights On, and that was probably May of last year. So, it's been over a year.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, a little bit over a year ago, and do you remember when I came down to your offices? It was four or five years ago.

Jack Pattillo: Oh, that's right. You came to the studio. It's all different now. It's all being moved around. It's crazy.

Larry Hryb: Good, good, good. Anyways, is Burnie moving you guys off shore for tax implication purposes or what?

Jack Pattillo: Dude, Burnie, actually he's moved off shore. So, he's no longer living in Texas anymore.

Larry Hryb: Where does he live?

Jack Pattillo: He's moved elsewhere. Undisclosed location.

Larry Hryb: Understood, understood. Understood. That's classic Burnie right there.

Jack Pattillo: He may be wanted by the FBI or ... I don't know.

Larry Hryb: Who knows? Who knows? Burnie is a mysterious individual. Anyway, Jack, always good to see you. Annual Pass, check out that podcast. Appreciate you coming on. Check you out over at Rooster Teeth or can follow you on Xbox live as Jack P.

Jack Pattillo: Yeah, Jack P or Jack_P on Twitter. Whichever one you want.

Larry Hryb: All right, my friend. We'll see you next time. Thanks again, and hopefully we can see each other in person sometime. But I'll be looking for that invite for your podcast, Annual Pass. Thanks again, my friend.

Jack Pattillo: Absolutely. Thank you very much, Larry.