Why Apex Legends Won’t Bring Back Its Old Battle Pass System, Despite Season 7’s Backlash

Respawn has no plans to revert the Apex Legends Battle Pass to its pre-Season 7 state, game director Chad Grenier has confirmed, despite all the backlash the Battle Royale developers have suffered. since the change.

The final season of Apex Legends, its seventh since its release, has been fairly well received. He added a new legend, Rampart, and took players to the third battle royale map, Olympus.

There was, however, a sticking point for Apex Legends players at all levels; the battle pass. Respawn made the decision to switch the title to a new progression system on November 4th. Let’s just say the players were less than delighted.

Respawn have tweaked it ⁠— they couldn’t just ignore the backlash ⁠— but according to Apex Legends director Chad Grenier, who responded to the community’s concern in a Questions & Answers hosted on Reddit, there is “no plan” to fully restore it anytime soon.

The main reason, Grenier said in a sharply discounted response (his post has just under 1,700 “negative votes” at the time of publication), is because players “don’t have much to do” to. at the end of each Apex Legends season.

Respawn often sees players complaining that they have completed the battle pass “2/3 of the season,” he added.

One solution, Respawn thought, was to extend the battle pass. This involved making the challenges more difficult and offering less experience in a new “star” system.

“We have adjusted our challenges to give players something to accomplish over the past month,” he explained. “This change … was calculated so that the majority of our players [could still] complete leveling without purchasing levels. “

To their credit, Respawn admitted they had “made a mistake” with the difficulty of the battle pass and communications. director Ryan K. Rigney soon excuse; he even added that the developers of Apex Legends were far from being “masters of manipulation”, as some had accused him.

However, the battle pass will not revert to its pre-Season 7 style. Grenier and the rest of the Apex development team remain loyal to the change. It is the “good step forward”, he declared; it just had a few issues and creases at the start.

“The battle pass is about keeping the players engaged throughout the season, so we’re not trying to hurt you here,” the Apex Legends director promised in a heavily criticized response.

“When these changes went live, we heard your feedback loud and clear, and we quickly made a change to make the challenges roughly 50% easier to complete, and we have more changes planned … to give more agency at the end of the challenge. ”

There are therefore no plans to go back. The developers will continue to “listen to comments in the future,” but Apex Legends will be keeping their Season 7 Battle Pass for that same future – they won’t be back, at least not anytime soon.

“We are not trying to secretly force you to purchase more levels of Battle Passes. Respawn is made up of passionate gamers just like you, ”Grenier added. “I promise all the team members are good people… [we] I just want the best for the game. ”

Apex Legends Season 7 and its Battle Pass will end in January 2021.