March 27, 2024
Apex Legends Season 20 just got here, and Respawn has unleashed a wave of changes and updates that redefine the experience we’re used to. In this overview, we’ll delve into the new features, enhancements, and balance adjustments that make Season 20 a must-play.
Breakout Rewards
Every two weeks, a new Legend will become free-to-play, accompanied by a set of challenges for permanent unlocking. Completing all Breakout Rewards Challenges unlocks exclusive rewards, including the Reactive “Top Tier” Flatline and the legendary skin “Runaway Renegade” Wraith. For an in-depth breakdown, check out this post.
If you already have the legends in your collection, you still need to complete the challenges to get the rewards, but fret not; you have until the end of the season to complete all the challenges.
Say hello to Crafting 2.0
Replicators are now free to use, so you no longer need to gather crafting materials around the map. The crafting menu now only offers essential options like Shield Battery, Medkit, Ammo, and Player Banners. Replicators are now single-use (for each team member), so make your choice wisely, as you’ll need to find another replicator if you want another item.
The number of available replicators has been increased to balance the fact that the replicators are now single-use. Some other quality-of-life improvements, such as decreased interaction time have been added too.
Credit: Apex Legends
Rampart’s Fire Sale
With the departure of crafting materials, Rampart introduced a ‘Fire Sale.’ All Big Maude paintball weapons are now free, but with a time delay in dispensing from their vending machine slots. Legends can only claim one free weapon, but Loba can still get another using her Black Market.
Legend Upgrades
This is, in my opinion, the highlight of the season. Season 20 introduces the Legend Upgrade system (for Battle Royale modes). This in-match progression system allows players to tailor their Legend’s abilities to their play style.
Body shields will no longer be looted on the ground. Instead, all Legends have inherent Armor that increases its capacity (permanently) as they level up. Legend armor is fueled by a Shield Core, which contains the current Shield HP, so fallen enemies will now drop their Shield Cores in their Death Boxes. EVO points are needed to upgrade your Shield and are now earned in various ways; once you reach EVO levels 2 and 3, you unlock unique ability upgrades specific to your Leyend. The addition of Legend Upgrades brings a strategic layer to every match, ensuring a fresh and dynamic experience with each drop.
We recently ranked the best Legends to play in Apex Legends, briefly commenting on certain changes to some Legends that have made them much more powerful.
You can check the complete list of legend upgrades in the official patch notes.
Credit: Apex Legends
Getting EVO points
There are now multiple ways to earn EVO points. These points can be divided into two categories:
- Personal Gains:
- Dealing damage to enemies.
- Successfully knocking down enemies or assisting in their knockdown.
- Knocking down a legend of a higher level will provide an underdog XP bonus.
- Executing finishers on opponents.
- Accessing EVO Caches found in Care Packages, Vaults, and Other locations
- Team Gains:
- Eliminating an entire squad
- Respawning your teammates
- Using class-specific interactions like Survey Becaons, Ring Consoles, or role-specific Supply Bins.
- Fighting wildlife (spiders, prowlers, …) or completing Trials.
- Evo Harvesters. These will randomly spawn on the map, any member of the squad can interact with them to award a large chunk of EVO to the whole team.
Ranked System
The Ranked mode has received significant changes to enhance your competitive Apex Legends experience. Here’s a concise breakdown:
- Level Requirement and Splits
- The level requirement is now reduced to level 20 (previously 50; this is huge as grinding up to level 50 required many, many hours).
- Splits return, and so does the season reset. Every player will start at 1 RP with a quick split reset dropping rankings by 6 divisions.
- Players will receive a Ranked Tier Badge for their highest achieved rank across all platforms.
- Transparent Scoring:
- Scoring adopts a more transparent model, focusing more on eliminations over placements. We can, once again, get into the fray at the beginning of the game and win points without having to secure a safe top 10 finish to start generating positive points.
- Hidden skill ratings will no longer influence matchmaking or scoring.
- Improved Ranked Point system with an entry cost of 20 RP per tier starting at Silver. This gives us some breathing room to go a little wild and practice new weapons and combinations in the lower leagues and then be comfortable in our chosen build to climb the higher leagues.
- Elimination Scoring:
- Elimination score scales with placements, increasing with higher team placements. This means that it is still worth fighting to win the game (after all, this is still a battle royale), but they are trying to give more value to kills (which was a bit badly balanced in the last two seasons).
- No hard cap on eliminations or points, with eliminations after the sixth worth half their value.
- Bonuses:
- Top 5 Streak Bonus: you can earn additional Ranked Points for maintaining a placement streak of 5th or better, escalating with each match in the streak, up to a maximum of a 40 RP bonus.
- Challenger Bonus: you gain a 50% bonus on eliminating a higher-ranked player, unaffected by the elimination soft cap of 6 kills.
- Matchmaking:
- Matchmaking is based on Ranked Points values, so you will be matched with people who have a similar RP value.
- Premade parties are matched by the highest-ranked player’s ranking.
- Tier Structure:
- Promotional Trials and Provisional Matches are removed (bye-bye promotion trials, you won’t be missed).
- Demotion and Demotion Protection remain consistent with Ignite’s Ranked.
Honestly, I’m quite happy with these changes and – in an attempt to keep the game up-to-date and fun – it seems Respawn knows how to listen and roll back when it makes changes that haven’t been well received.
Conclusion
Season 20 represents a new chapter in Apex Legends and this time it brings a focus on player feedback. I think the implementation of the legend upgrades brings a breath of fresh air to the game and the new Ranked system is closer to being more well-balanced than what we have seen the last couple seasons. Congratulations Respawn because you always surprise for the better. Thanks for listening to your players!