If you want to try out a new character in Apex Legends, right now you’ve got no choice but to do that with the pressure of actually playing the live game. If you, like me, are terrified of letting down your teammates while you try to figure out when that ult is more useful, Respawn finally has a solution: a proper training mode.
The existing Training Grounds tutorial is expanding and rebranding to the Firing Range. This update is “coming soon” and will land sometime during season three. Respawn announced the mode in its first Apex Legends devstream (via SlashGear), and showed a few minutes of the new features in action.
Firing Range is built on the foundation of the existing training ground map, but it’s now fully populated with every possible loot variation across all rarities, and it’ll now allow you to switch characters on the fly. That even lets you try out character synergies, in certain circumstances – the devs say you could, for example, drop a jump pad as Octane and go flying as a different legend.
You’ll even be able to party up with friends for multiplayer training. The devs say that feedback on places like Reddit has brought in features like practice dummies, and part of the reason the mode exists at all is because players were running through the tutorial just to try out guns in the brief aiming segment.
You can see the Firing Range in action at the 6:45 mark in the video above.
Apex Legends season three is underway, and after a spectacular launch and a disappointing follow-through, it looks like Respawn’s battle royale is finally starting to settle into a solid groove of ongoing updates.