Footstep audio really needs fixing

Well if you play on speakers...sorry you will be in a huge disadvantage and that has been true since 2000s and first shooter games. You need Stereo headphones to really pick up directional sound. E.g. in Quake you basically could mimic wallhack - sound was just THAT good that you could pre-aim person through wall and land a shot at peak.

I went from "standard / cheap" Sony headphones (that did the job but I realized at the end were too base heavy) to Sennheizer Hd429s (sound much more crisp, thought it can't get any better) to Simgot EM6L (I saw that most pro players these days use in-ear headphones, also those in general tend to be less base heavy, plus big motivation was heat in summer - I was just sweating too much due to headphones and given you can't really wash Hd429s they became "nasty").

As for EQ as I got to know each headphone has their own "sound profile" so basically you need to adjust EQ per game, per your preference and per headphone model. There is youtube channel GadgetryTech, dude there does for me good enough job to provide EQ presets for most popular combination of games and headphones. Given Simgot EM6Ls are quite popular choice these days I was good to go with his EQ settings. Used modified version for my previous Sennheizers from his site as well.
If you don't have your headphones listed on his EQ template list you can use basically any available EQ software. Record your game without EQ set -> playback on a player which has EQ graph available -> see which frequences dominate -> set EQ to lower those and increase footsteps (mid range frequencies I guess around 200-2000 hz ones?) accordingly. Basically tune to your preference, nothing hard especially if you have a friend who is willing to jump into firing range with you, enable friendly fire and just run around you in circles :)

Basically two main issues with Apex sound is:
a) it is too base heavy
b) there are many sounds / sound effects that are too loud e.g. 30-30 especially with skullpiercer is so **bleep** loud when shooting that I kid you not I sometimes opted out of it because on my sound settings it just feels unpleasant to play with it

Both these muffle footsteps a lot. First can be dealt with via EQ, second unfortunately is not and you can just adjust volume and choose to hear footsteps but also suffer when e.g. 30-30 is on hand or lower volume, get comfortable sound, but miss out on top potential regarding footsteps in game. At least that is my experience.

I have tuned to mid-range = my game is quite loud, at times maybe unhealthy loud, at the same time I can play 5+h comfortably and never feel any disadvantage audio vise (except cases where Apex just f#$@ you up via no footstep audio of enemies :D).