Why change the battle pass

Not going to lie, this change makes me not want to play S22.

I don't care how cool the new map is, or how they rework legends, or any of that if they're going to change the core battle pass we've all known for 21 seasons to this non-sense. (Well, 20 seasons since S1 was a bit different). This is clearly a cash grab and it was already annoying when they kept releasing recolors after recolors and were throwing milestone events at us, but this new battle pass system? Really? You also cannot use existing coins, (or future coins), to buy the battle pass, meaning you MUST buy it outright twice per season if you want the battle pass.

I suppose I could always just play the game completely for free and ignore the battle pass. However for me, having a battle pass to finish has been one of the reasons why I kept playing besides ranked.

Now I might as well uninstall the game and never look back because I won't be buying the battle pass. Not to mention that if you don't own the battle pass, the pop-up window won't stop spamming you until you buy it. One of my friends was getting reminded to buy the battle pass after every single match, while another one was getting reminded each time they leveled up the battle pass. This pop-up notification will drive me crazy. Its already annoying being frequently reminded I still have heirloom shards I could use and the event page popping up every 5th or so match, so an additional pop-up window would be the last straw.

This isn't the first time they've done something like this either. Back in the first year or so of Apex, they gave away the battle pass for free to any player who had the EA Play Pro subscription, then after a few seasons, they no longer included it in the subscription which was sometime in 2020, as that's when I had a subscription for a year. They gave no word or warning that they were going to make this change either until AFTER the new season was released.

I decided to rebuy the battle pass and move on. Not this time. I'm not paying near twice as much for one pass and then pay again just to have both passes. EA made it perfectly clear that they want money and the players have also made it perfectly clear that this is NOT the way to do it. With the lack of respect, I'm shocked players still buy cosmetics, let alone EA games, just look at the Sims 4. Yeah, the Sims 4 became free two or so years ago, but if you want every DLC, its well over a thousand to own every single one of them.

In the end, vote with your wallets and don't buy the battle pass. Afterall, that's what Respawn told us to do after the Peacekeeper heirloom event. The more people buy in, the more they're going to charge us until the game is completely dead. Besides the lack of respect, I'm also surprised that players are still buying cosmetics considering that nothing is really being done about the cheating, smurfing, bots, no audio, awful servers, etc.

I don't understand whoever decides on these types of changes because its like they want to speed run games until they die. Like, instead of having a game be healthy for many years, it gets milked for money as quickly as possible and then tossed aside. Its like one of those questions you'd sometimes hear, where its like "would you like a million now, or a hundred thousand a month?" EA is going the "million now" route every single time even though in this example. After a year, they'll have $1,200,000, and Apex been around since 2019, which is about 5 years now. So, it would be $6,000,000, (again, with this example).

If I was running a game like this, the battle pass would be free and have cosmetics that are worth grinding for, (closer to the end of the pass, of course). The cosmetic store would be well worth buying and there would be extra optional things players could buy to boost themselves while supporting the game, like maybe more XP or something like that. Overall, make spending money optional for the players so they wouldn't feel pressured and like its worth spending money, rather than making everything cost money. I wouldn't be surprised if they one day charge money to play ranked, or even charge to play any of the modes at all. I'm surprised they haven't done that or thrown in a bunch of ADs yet.

If you look at games like Genshin Impact, Star Rail, and now Zenless Zone Zero, you'll see the games are free to play, free to enjoy, and spending money is completely optional. Where they get players is through the gotcha system, where you could spend money to then be able to pull new characters and weapons. But, if you really enjoy the game, you can completely play for free and earn the items for pulls, rather than spending money.

I've gotten Venti and Wanderer from grinding when I was actively playing Genshin Impact. It felt so nice and rewarding that I ended up buying the Welkin Moon pack a few times along with the battle pass. I've also had a friend who, (for some reason), spent over $300, (although now that I think about it, it might of had something to do with the wishes having several characters and weapons that they wanted).

Also, "MiHoYo made more money than either EA, Activision Blizzard and Embracer. According to recent financial news, MiHoyo - developers of Genshin Impact - made more profit in 2022 than major players like EA, Activision Blizzard and even Embracer Group." (MiHoYo is what HoYoverse is called in China). On top of that, Genshin Impact, Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero are all owned by HoYoverse. That means that if all three games are successful, they're actively getting money from the players that want to spend money. The amount they've made off of Genshin Impact alone is a lot, now imagine how much they're getting from all three games. Just saying, there's better ways to make people be willing to spend money, and in a way that isn't a cash grab.

EA seems to like playing "5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel", (its a Steam game), with everyone's wallet but they completely miss the mark pretty much everytime.

EA also needs to consider that prices are going up; that housing is getting more expensive, food is costing more, etc. People may be cutting out things like cable and even streaming services that any extra money they do end up having should be spent on things they actually want, rather than another collection event. EA could have $5 items here and there, where more people would buy them if they think it was worth it, (and issues like the cheating was getting resolved). Instead, its $300+ "events".

Something I love about Nintendo is that even though they started charging for online play, they understood that people have a budget, and so it costs us $20 for one person a year, or $35 for up to 8 people a year. It would be cool if Xbox and Playstation did that too, but on top of buying the online membership, players are also given access to a large library of games. Basically Xbox/Playstation's version of EA Play and its usually the games that are exclusive to their platform, like how Playstation has Spiderman games, and Xbox has Halo games.

Lastly, this is to EA. Its okay to release things that don't instantly make money, (or make any at all). Players, (at least I do), would rather see the effort in games released, said games being updated properly and not with bugs, and having a market that isn't out for money. If Titanfall 3 was released and it has an awesome story mode and the online play was amazing, players more than likely would pay the $60 to own the game and maybe more for cosmetics to enjoy as long as the game is fun to play and not a shakedown. (Yes, I'm calling Apex for what it is, a shakedown).