Apex Legends has improved battle pass progression, barely
This season is looking like a helluva grind
Apex Legends' seventh season dropped this week, and with it came a load of fun new things - a map, a character and even a vehicle. But it also brought some big changes to how the battle pass works. Unfortunately, these changes made the battle pass a whole lot more difficult to level up, making players need to do about twice the amount of work to get half the amount of progression. Last night, Respawn tweaked the new system, but players still have a huge grind ahead of them compared to previous seasons.
To explain what's going on, it's time to use some maths (oh god I hope I get this right). Back in Season 6, players could earn 54,000 CP (Challenge Points) each week to level up their battle pass. You got a new level when you hit 9k, 18k, 27k, 36k, and then the final 54k, meaning you could get five levels a week from this alone - more if you completed challenges that just straight up awarded a level.
Apex's new battle pass system requires you to earn Stars. Completing challenges gives you a number of Stars (between one and five, depending on difficulty), and you need 10 to gain a battle pass level. The first problem here is that the new challenges were essentially making players do more for less. Old challenges that required you to revive your teammates five times would give you an entire battle pass level, new challenges that ask you to do the same 15 times give you a mere two Stars.
That's not even the worst bit, though. Stars can also be earned from playing matches and gaining XP. However, each Star was worth 10,000 XP. So, for a single battle pass level, you needed 100,000 XP.
Following an awful lot of backlash, Respawn have since changed this. Now for one Star you need 5000 XP instead - which is still a total of 50,000 XP for one battle pass level, when that same amount would've gotten you four last season.
Respawn added that from next week, weekly challenges will take "much less" time to complete. They say these changes are to make progression easier to track, which yeah, I think that much is true. However, they also say it's supposed to be more "streamlined and rewarding", which is certainly not the case.
I can't help but feel like this is a little shady. A lot-tle shady, actually. It's worth noting that Respawn sell a battle pass bundle that automatically gives you 25 levels (which would cost you at least £32/$40 to get the Apex Coins you needed), and you can buy individual battle pass levels with 150 Apex Coins, too (of which the minimum you can buy is 1000 for £8/$10).
Season 7 looks brilliant, but all this just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Here's hoping the new changes actually make the battle pass less of a grind, but for now I'd hold off on spending your hard-earned cash on it.
