Why Apex Legends won't bring back its old Battle Pass system, despite Season 7 backlash

Respawn doesn’t have any plans to revert the Apex Legends battle pass back to its pre-Season 7 state, game director Chad Grenier has confirmed, despite all the backlash the battle royale devs have copped since making the switch.

The latest season of Apex Legends, its seventh since release, has been fairly well-received. It added a new legend, Horizon, and took players to the battle royale’s third map, Olympus.

There’s been one sticking point for Apex Legends players across the board though; the battle pass. Respawn made the decision to switch the title over to a new progression system on Nov. 4. Let’s just say players were less than thrilled.

Respawn have tweaked it ⁠— they couldn’t just ignore the backlash ⁠— but according to Apex Legends director Chad Grenier, who responded to the community concern in a Reddit-hosted Q&A, there are “no plans” to fully revert it anytime soon.

The main reason, Grenier said in a heavily-downvoted reply (his post has just under 1,700 ‘downvotes’ at the time of publication), is due to players “not having much left to do” at the end of each Apex Legends season.

Respawn often sees players complaining about finishing the battle pass “2/3rds of the way through the season,” he added.

A solution, Respawn believed, was to extend the battle pass. This included making challenges more difficult, and offering less experience in a new ‘star’ system.

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

To their credit, Respawn did admit they had “made a mistake” with the battle pass difficulty, and comms. director Ryan K. Rigney soon apologized; he even added the Apex Legends devs were far from “masters of manipulation,” as some had accused.

The battle pass won’t be going back to its pre-Season 7 style, however. Grenier and the rest of the Apex dev team are sticking to their guns on the change. It’s the “right step forward,” he stated; it just had a few problems and kinks at the start.

“The battle pass is about keeping players engaged through the season, so we’re not trying to do you wrong here,” the Apex Legends director promised in a heavily-downvoted reply.

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

So, there’s no plans to swap back. The devs will keep “listening to feedback into the future,” but Apex Legends will be keeping its Season 7 battle pass into that same future ⁠— they won’t be going back, at least not any time soon.

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“We are not trying to secretly force you into buying more battle pass levels. Respawn is made up of passionate gamers, just like you,” Grenier added. “I promise everyone on the team are good people… [we] just want what’s best for the game.”

Apex Legends Season 7, and its battle pass, will end in Jan. 2021.

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