[Feature Request] Legend Selection: Auto-Selection & Heirloom Choice

Hello Respawn team,

I would like to suggest two quality-of-life improvements to the Legend Selection screen.

Both suggestions are focused on making the pre-match experience more convenient and flexible, without affecting gameplay balance.

1. Add Custom Auto-Selection Preferences for Legends

Currently, if a player does not manually select a Legend before the selection timer ends, the game automatically selects an available Legend based on the player's previous play history, excluding Legends that have already been selected by teammates.

This can sometimes be inconvenient, especially in Ranked.

Many players temporarily switch to another window during Legend Selection, for example to check Discord, a browser, or another application. If the Legend they intended to play is selected by a teammate while they are away, they may not notice it in time.

When they return to the game, the automatic selection system may choose a Legend that they do not currently want to play.

This can be particularly relevant in Ranked because Legend balance and team compositions can change between seasons and patches. A Legend that a player has played frequently in the past may not necessarily be the Legend they currently prefer to use.

I know the community has suggested similar ideas before, but I think this feature has become even more useful as the game and Legend balance continue to change.

Suggested solution:

Allow players to set their own Custom Auto-Selection Preferences for Legends.

For example:

Preferred Legends

1. Wraith

2. Horizon

3. Pathfinder

If the player does not manually select a Legend, the game would automatically select the highest-priority available Legend from this list.

If the player's first choice has already been selected by a teammate, the system would automatically move to the next available Legend on the list.

This would give players more control over automatic Legend selection while keeping the existing system intact.

2. Add Heirloom Selection to the Legend Selection Screen

A second quality-of-life improvement would be allowing players to select their equipped Heirloom directly from the Legend Selection screen.

Apex Legends now has many Universal Heirlooms, and some players may want to use different Heirlooms depending on which Legend they are playing.

However, when playing with friends or using the "Play Again" feature, a squad can continue playing together for hours without returning to the lobby.

If a player wants to change their Heirloom during this time, they currently need to leave the matchmaking flow and return to the appropriate customization menu.

Suggested solution:

Add a small "Heirloom" button to the Legend Selection screen.

For example:

Legend Selection

[ Wraith ] [ Horizon ] [ Pathfinder ]

Heirloom: [ Hadoken ▼ ]

Clicking the button could open a small selection menu showing the player's unlocked Universal Heirlooms.

The player could then select the Universal Heirloom they want to use before entering the match.

The exact implementation could be left to Respawn, but the main idea is to allow players to change their Universal Heirloom directly from the Legend Selection screen.

Why this could be useful:

This would make Universal Heirlooms much more flexible.

Players would no longer need to leave their squad, return to the lobby, open the customization menu, change their Heirloom, and then start matchmaking again simply because they want to use a different Heirloom with another Legend.

With more Universal Heirlooms being available, players may own several different options but still rarely use them because changing the equipped Heirloom currently requires leaving the matchmaking flow.

Allowing Heirloom selection during Legend Select would make these cosmetics much easier to use naturally from one match to the next.

It could also encourage players to use a wider variety of Heirlooms instead of keeping the same one equipped all the time.

Overall:

These two changes would primarily improve convenience and customization without changing core gameplay or balance.

Custom Auto-Selection Preferences would give players more control over which Legend is automatically selected, particularly when they temporarily miss the selection screen or when their preferred Legend has already been selected by a teammate.

Heirloom Selection would make Universal Heirlooms much more flexible during long sessions with friends and through the "Play Again" feature.

Both features could be implemented as extensions of the existing Legend Selection UI.

Thank you for considering these suggestions.