Apex Legends Bloodhound Update Makes Them Play As Intended

Developer Respawn is trying to get people to play as Apex Legends' Bloodhound as the technological tracker is supposed to be used--a reconnaissance specialist. Update 4.1 is now live alongside the System Override Collection event, and the patch includes several adjustments aimed at making Bloodhound behave more like a recon character.

In Update 4.1, the range of Bloodhound's tactical ability, Eye of the Allfather, will be increased by three times. Whereas before, Eye of the Allfather was good for seeing an enemy hiding in one building, now it's range can encompass several structures. The scan lasts a whole second longer too, making it easier to catch enemy squads with the ability.

To balance this change, however, Eye of the Allfather will now take twice as long to activate. This decreases the utility of Eye of the Allfather in the midst of a firefight. "The intent is that we want Bloodhound players to come upon a town and maybe see some markers and then use [Eye of the Allfather] to scan the town," Respawn lead game designer Carlos Pineda said during Apex Devstream #4.

The idea is to use Bloodhound's abilities prior to a fight in order to locate another squad instead of during the fight to help you find where enemies are hiding. So Bloodhound finds markers with Tracker, scans the area with Eye of the Allfather, and then leads their squad to the enemy's hiding spot with Beast of the Hunt. It's a bit more of a passive role for the recon specialist, who has been mostly used as another offensive character since day one. This new role is more in line with Pathfinder and Crypto's jobs (the other recon characters), which is to provide intel for their squad as they move around the map.

The role of the recon character in Apex Legends has always been a little nebulous--why, for example, was Pathfinder a support character at launch when his passive ability is literally a form of reconnaissance? Respawn is seemingly attempting to better define the role going forward. Pathfinder is now a recon character, for instance, and the terrifyingly aggressive Bloodhound has seen numerous adjustments leading up to this one in Update 4.1 that have all been aimed at making the character less of an attacker and more of a hunter.

It remains to be seen whether players actually adopt this new strategy when playing as Bloodhound, though it's nice to see Respawn beginning to define the role of recon characters as information gatherers as opposed to characters that just have some form of scanning ability.