There are lots and lots of guns in Apex Legends but they are nothing without ammo. If you’re in a fast paced match, you’re going to burn through a lot of it and have limited inventory to manage it all. If you’re in a good team who help each other out, you can ask for ammo in Apex Legends. This tutorial will show you how.
Apex Legends is a loot shooter to beat all loot shooters. A Battle Royale game that has taken an already busy genre and thrown it onto its head. With great graphics, smooth performance, an excellent launch and all those gameplay elements we look for in BR, it’s no wonder this game is so popular.
Apex Legends is a team game with three players per team. It manages to avoid the usual toxicity of such games by making voice chat purely optional. Instead, it uses a very cool ping system and built-in voiced comments to make it seem as though your characters are communicating by themselves. It is the best system I know of in games right now and goes a long way to explaining why Apex Legends is so popular.
That ping system is how you ask for ammo in Apex Legends.
Ping in Apex Legends
Pinging is an exceptionally useful feature of the game. Hit R1 or middle mouse while pointing at something and the game calls out to your team highlighting the item and marks the location with a yellow mark. You can ping loot, containers, enemy players and other items within the game and it quickly becomes second nature.
If you’re a good team player, you will ping any blue or purple loot you come across and don’t need yourself. That way you let your teammates know there is something useful around and where to find it. The ping will tell the team what it is and what it offers so you can make informed decisions about whether to go for it or not.
The basic ping is accessed through the R1 or middle mouse button but there is a whole other ping menu you can use too. If you hold down the ping button, a new radial menu appears on screen. You can choose one of eight options to help with the game.
Those options include Go, Attacking Here, Enemy, Going Here, Defending This Area, Watching Here, Someone’s Been Here and Looting This Area. You will hear some of these calls automatically within the game as it fills the silence with its own chatter.
You can also change the ping key in Settings if the default isn’t comfortable.
As well as letting your team know where to go and offer guidance towards loot, you can also make requests. This feature isn’t quite so well known but once you know how it works, you will find yourself using it all the time.
Asking for ammo in Apex Legends
To ask for ammo, open your inventory, highlight the weapon you need ammo for and ping it. You can do the same for attachments, medkits and any lootable item. It’s a very simple system that works exceptionally well once you get used to it.
Then your team can ping that ammo as they find it and you can say thanks by using the appropriate button. You can then back and forth within the game pointing out useful loot and helping each other get the items you need to compete.
There is also a dibs system in place but I rarely see people use it. If someone pings an item you want, you can ping that item to call it. This won’t reserve it for you or prevent a teammate getting there first, but it is a polite way of saying ‘I want that’. There is no guarantee you’ll get it though.
Pinging makes Apex Legends a very polite game even though it is competitive. It also makes it feel alive even when nobody has a mic or is talking. It’s an innovative system that solves the problem of silent teammates and empty airwaves while you play. The lines may become repetitive but as they are usually in the background as filler, they aren’t as annoying as other games with repetitive lines.
Overall, Apex Legends is a superb game with some very smart design choices. Ping is just one of them and does a great job of adding to the gameplay without taking away. I wonder how long it will be until other games use similar systems to work around the lack of communication, or too much communication from players!
Have you mastered the Apex Legends ping system? Think it could be improved? Tell us how below!
