- Apex Legends is one of the few battle royale games that stood the test of time.
- However, the game is currently ridden with microtransactions of all kinds.
- It features several stores, events that cost hundreds of dollars, and paid skin recolors you’d have to grind for in battle passes.
Many battle royale games were released during the peak of this genre’s popularity. However, only a few remain, including Fortnite, Warzone, PUBG, and Apex Legends.
Set in the Titanfall universe, Apex Legends was among the most unique of these battle royale games and still stands strong to date with hundreds of thousands of active players. However, this battle royale title is far from perfect.
It features some of the most expensive in-store items that drain your wallet faster than getting hit with a Kraber shot drops your health. These microtransactions have only gotten worse with each season and have reached a point where battle passes mean nothing if you want good skins for your weapons or characters.
Why it matters: The microtransaction problem is apparent in all modern releases today because publishers and audiences have normalized this practice.
Current State Of The Apex Legends Stores
Since its launch, Apex Legends has had different sections in its store, the first being for the battle pass and one for a regular store with skins that could only be unlocked with either Apex Coins or Crafting Materials.
Every season, the game would have a limited-time event requiring a whopping $140 to unlock all items that would grant players a character-specific heirloom. Aside from collection events, Apex Legends has added mini-events that cleverly force you to pay for packs.
The first pack will cost only 100 coins, with the price increasing after each purchase. Completing the milestones via purchase will grant you free items, but you have no way of knowing what item you’ll receive. This makes it a gamble, even though a probability section shows each item’s rarity percentage.
Mythics And Prestige Skins
The game features nearly 20 mythic skins, character-specific and universal, with recolors of the same heirloom sold for full price.
You can get heirloom shards for free through regular Apex Packs, but the chances of receiving one through these packs are less than 1%, and players are guaranteed to get a limited number of packs as they level up, which means investing several hundred hours into the grind.
Later, Apex Legends introduced prestige skins, another means of making money. You can spend more heirlooms to look cool in-game, and heirloom shards can be obtained via event collections or Apex Coins.
Along with skin recolors, the game also started offering heirloom reskins for the same price of 150 shards. By now, you must be thinking how absurd this is getting, but this is still not the end of what EA is doing with the microtransactions.
More Currencies And Wallet-Emptying Tactics
A couple of months ago, Apex Legends had its first crossover event with another game, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The event was highly anticipated, but things quickly took a turn for the worse.
To no one’s surprise, the event was another cash-grab attempt by EA since unlocking all of the items required a whopping $360. You can get an Xbox Series S and a Game Pass subscription for that price.
As expected, the studio faced a lot of backlash for the price. The worst part was that EA practically lured people into purchasing since the first packs cost less than the next ones. This forced players to spend more until they finished the event and gained the first death-box skin.
The Death Box skin could only be received by completing the event and had a 1% chance of dropping if you opened a pack. If this wasn’t bad enough, the price of event packs was also increased from 700 coins to 1000 coins.
Season 21 introduced a new currency type: exotic shards. These shards can be used to customize mythic skins, such as recoloring universal heirlooms.
The worst part is that EA won’t stop offering these microtransactions anytime soon, and people continue to pay for them. As a community, we should raise our voices against these actions.
Aside from these microtransactions, the game could be in a better state regarding how it plays. Being ridden with progression bugs, hackers, and more makes it such a bad experience that it breaks my heart as a huge fan.
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