Apex Legends has been through a series of major changes in its last couple of season launches. Previously limited-timed game modes were made permanent and given their own rotation, solo queuing was brought back, legends were given new abilities and recategorized, and the ranked system has been changed time and time again based on player feedback.
Now, the next biggest change players were still waiting on is here, which is a total re-working of the battle pass. Players have wanted Respawn to shake-up the battle pass for some time, but what Respawn and EA have done isn’t exactly what players had in mind.
The new system is not going down well with players at all, and has led to yet another onslaught of review-bombing on Steam. While it’s easy to think that these players are just overreacting, their concerns with the new battle pass aren’t all too outlandish.
Firstly, the changes. The old battle pass required players to work through levels 1-110, with free and premium rewards available throughout but most importantly if you bought the battle pass and played through to level 110, you’d earn enough Apex Coins, the premium currency for the game, to buy next season’s battle pass.
Now, instead of their being one battle pass in a season, there will be two from level 1-60 that players need to complete within each season split. The major difference though is that you can no longer purchase the premium battle pass with Apex Coins. You must buy them with real-world currency, meaning there is no longer any way to earn the premium battle pass just through playing the game.
Each battle pass costs $9.99 USD and you’ll need to spend that per split to get the premium track for both battle passes, which essentially means each new season asks players to shell out $20.
In its blog post detailing all the changes Respawn is persistent in showcasing that the battle pass hasn’t just gotten a price increase, the rewards players get have been overhauled to be more valuable, and many of the under-used rewards that players commonly ignored have been removed.
Unfortunately for Respawn, this has done little to make players feel better about the situation. The price increase and the fact that you can no longer earn the premium battle pass through just playing the game has many players claiming this change was their last straw.
Apex Legends was once a prime example for other free-to-play games on how to do it right. If players wanted to buy everything under the sun, they could – or they could grind enough in-game currency through gameplay and only spend money once, if they wanted to do so at all.
Now any player who wants to earn premium rewards is forced to spend money, twice per season, and they’re under a greater time-crunch to get through the battle pass they paid for.
The battle pass changes are going live along with Season 22, and if players are loud enough about it or decide to boycott purchasing the new battle pass, it could be the first and last season to have these changes.
We’ve seen review-bombing and widespread backlash change a studios plans before, so it’s possible that Respawn could go back on these changes. But Apex Legends isn’t a brand new game like Helldivers 2 trying to build up a community of players.
It already has millions of players who still just log on and do their daily challenges, because the core gameplay of Apex Legends still ranks as one of the best shooters on the market.
Respawn and EA might just try to ride out the noise until those who really have an issue leave and everyone else stops caring enough. We’ll see how it plays out.
Source – [Respawn]