What is Apex Legends Hitboxes and Hit Registration

Apex Legends is a game with a diverse cast of characters, both in terms of visual appearances and special abilities. Some characters have laid back physiques, while others are more battle hardened and regularly work out.

Naturally, this means that character models have different shapes and sizes in the game. And that leads to unique hitboxes and hit registrations for each character.

This doesn't matter too much in casual gameplay, but if you play competitively, then these details can make a good difference between victory and loss. And if you prioritize characters with smaller hitboxes, then you can gain an advantage when it comes to the hit registration of the game.

So, how do hitboxes work, what's hit registration, and how can you take advantage of these things? Let's jump into our quick guide and find out.

What are Apex Legends Hitboxes?

Even if you take a look at a random wallpaper of Apex Legends, you can notice right away that the playable characters in the game have different shapes and sizes. Some characters are bigger, which means it’s easier to hit them. And some are smaller, which helps them be more evasive in times of battle.

The area of pixels on which you can shoot to hit an enemy is what a hitbox is. If you shoot next to a character’s shoulder and miss – that’s because the hitbox does not extend to that point. So, the entire body of the legend (and nothing else) is the hitbox in Apex Legends.

In certain genres like fighting games, hitboxes have invisible barriers too which means your attack is registered even in areas where the body of your enemy isn’t visually present.

But that does not apply to shooting games like Apex Legends as you have to be careful and precise in how you attack your enemy. So, you don’t have to worry about any extra details when it comes to shooting at enemies or being shot at.

You can’t take any specific advantage of the hitbox in Apex Legends other than just making sure not to select a physically big legend like Gibraltar. By doing that, you’d be more evasive, and it will be less easy to shoot at you from a distance.

It’s interesting to note that this does not happen in every shooting game because a lot of them try to make sure that every character model is the same size. So, Apex Legends is very unique in this sense.

What is Hit Registration in Apex Legends?

Hit Registration is when any bullet, grenade, or punch in Apex Legends hits someone. Whether you get shot at (and then lose health or shield) or someone else does, the exact moment when a player is damaged is what we call hit registration.

There is no trick to hit registration, as it simply happens on its own as long as people are attacking each other’s hitbox properly. Some games have terrible latency, which lets players exploit the system by trying to shoot prematurely knowing well that the hit will land. But Apex Legends has a 20Hz server tick rate – which is lower than most AAA online multiplayer video games.

Furthermore, there is a short hit register icon that appears when you damage an enemy player too – so you can’t even be confused as to whether you’re landing hits or not. Thus, Apex Legends is not a game that you can get lucky with in terms of exploitation of hitboxes or hit registration.

We hope that you found this guide useful and learned something new about hitboxes and hit registration. And while you’re still here, make sure to check out some of our other helpful Apex Legends guides on EsportsDriven too!