As an exploration into game balance and experimenting with Excel/Google Sheets, I and fellow FIEA Technical Designer Ethan Irwin, created a model to compare the balance of every weapon in Apex Legends, eventually being able to statistically evaluate the best and worst weapons from every category.
Starting with statistics for every weapon pulled from the Apex Legends wiki, we calculated a variety of variables including: ammo frequency, fire rate, accuracy, chance to hit each body part, and a score for the range of the weapon. Using these variables we ran each weapon through nine unique encounters with enemies giving each weapon a score for how it performed in these simulations. Then weighting the scores from each simulation based on it's likelihood to occur we were able to give each weapon a score which we were finally able to use to rank the weapons.
The best part about this method is we can easily change the weights for how important ammo, time to kill, or range are as well as the average health of enemies, and much more. By changing these variables in one location, the entire model updates and will give us new rankings for the weapons based on the new variables.
