Apex Legends player hits top rank without scoring a single kill: 'That is just so dumb'
Is the point of battle royale games to survive, or to eliminate competitors? The latest season of Apex Legends has centered that question with a new ranking system that's stupefying top players. To «prove how bad the system is,» NRG pro sweetdreams(opens in new tab) challenged himself to hit the game's highest rank, Apex Predator, without scoring any kills. After playing for almost 19 hours, entirely livestreamed(opens in new tab), he succeeded.
«I mean, that is just so dumb,» said sweetdreams after climbing into Predator rank on the stream. «I don't even know what to say, bro. I don't even know what to say. That is one of the dumbest screenshots in the history of the game, on the right side of your screen [where his rank is displayed]. That is literally one of the dumbest screenshots ever. Holy shit.»
Not only did sweetdreams not eliminate any players during his Predator run, he didn't deal any damage at all over 50 matches. He did this while solo queuing, so he couldn't count on always having expert teammates. After the stream, he tweeted(opens in new tab): «Increase the Entry Fee for higher levels or we're sitting in trees!»
The entry fee in question is the 35 «Ladder Points» it costs to play a ranked Apex match. Ladder Points are earned by placing and performing well in ranked matches—if you do really well, you'll earn more than the 35 you spent to enter and your LP total will grow. Earning 1,000 LP promotes you to the next ranked division.
The 35 LP entry fee replaces Apex's old «Ranked Points» entry fees, which scaled from 10RP for a Bronze match to 70RP+ for matches played at the highest ranks. That scaling was designed to «filter out unskilled players from higher ranks,» according to a Respawn blog post(opens in
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