If you haven’t heard the outrage yet, Respawn announced this week that it’s overhauling Apex Legend’s Battle Pass. There are a lot of parts to this, but in brief, the 110-l🌜evel seasonal battle pass is getting split into two 60-level battle passes. Each half-season battle pass will cost roughly the same as the old full-season battle pass, but with increased material rewards and packs, and far fewer filler rewards.
There’s also a new Premium+ pass that’s cheaper than the old Premium Bundle that will include exclusive character skin variants. More and better rewards sounds grea💜t, right? The only problem is you can longer pay for seasons for Apex Coins. If you want a Premium Battle Pass, you’re going to have to pay for it out of pocket.
Understandably, players are upset about this change. In the past, you could always earn 🥃enough Apex Coins during a seasꦜon to pay for the next one. As long as you were consistently playing, you could effectively roll your battle passes forward forever after your initial investment. That won’t be the case anymore. You have to buy each battle pass if you want the rewards now, and the battle passes are coming twice as often.
Apex Legends Drops To "Mixed" On Steam Amidst Battle Pass Changes 🅠
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It’s probably way too early in the article to start defending Respawn, but here I go anyway. The standard of letting ꧃pl༺ayers earn their next battle pass by playing was created by Fortnite, and it just isn’t realistic to expect any other game to compete with that. Fortnite can give battle passes away because Epic knows it’s going to make hundreds of millions on Batman, Goku, and Travis Scott skins.
You may think these are two massive battle royales from giant publishers, but when it comes to monetization, Fortnite is Amazon, and Apex Legends is your local mom-and-pop bookstore. It’s reasonable for Apex Legends to charge $10 for a battle pass, especially considering it's about to make the battle passes a lot more valuable. I’d rather pay $10 for a 60-level pass that gives lots of big rewards quickly, than a 110-level free pass that’s full of junk I don’t want or need.
Unfortunately, it’s far too late for Respawn to change course without incurring the wrath of the gamer. People that have been playing Apex hardcore for years, who ‘earned’ every battle pass for free, are now being asked to pay for it, and they're pissed. It’s an especially sticky situation because the change is going to affect the most hardcore, loudest people the most.
It’s easy for me to say it's a good change, since I barely play Apex these days. I’ve got $10 to spare, and I’d be much happier with a shorter battle pass that doles out the good stuff more frequently. The people this change hurts are the dedicated, consistent players, who spend all their time either playing the game or complaining about the game on Reddit. That’s who Respawn just threw under the bus.
There will be people that never forgive Respawn for doing this, and maybe give up the game altogether over it, and I think that’s fair. For those that stick around (or maybe those who, like me, are attracted to this change), my only h🎃ope is that Respawn actually cares about making progressing the battle pass a better experience and isn’t just desperate for money.
The filler rewards like trackers are only part of the problem. Apex battle passes are a slow, painful grind, and cutting the number of levels in half while giving people half as much time to complete them doesn’t address that issue at all. I don’t want to play three hours of Apex and only climb one level by the end of the night anymore. This is a positive change that makes the pass more rewarding, but i🧸t also needs to be a lot better paced, and the way Respawn describes this update doesn’t acknowledge that issue.
I appreciate that Respawn wants to increase the value of the battle pass and make the higher tiers more enticing, and that should always b🐭e the goal of any monetization system. I know everyone is mad that they can’t earn the battle passes for free anymore, but as someone that doesn’t mind spending ten bucks every couple months on the gam🔯es they play, I just hope this new battle pass is actually more fun than the old one.
Apex Legends’ New Battle Pass Pricing Is Unjusti🐬fiable
It can’t be bought with in-game currency, either
