Apex Legends: Resurrection is another fresh start for EA’s battle royale

theverge.com:

By Richard Lawler, a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget.

More than four years after its explosive launch shook up the battle royale market, Apex Legends is looking for yet another fresh start (no, that fresh start doesn’t include any updates about cross-progression or 120fps on consoles) when its new season, Resurrection, launches on August 8th at 1PM ET.

In the new season, the Apex developers are undertaking a campaign to rework and revisit existing elements, starting with one of the game’s older characters, Revenant.

Season 17 added a well-received new character in Ballistic and brought some needed changes to maps like World’s Edge, plus a new firing range area to train in. Unfortunately, it also added enough scoring changes to the ranked system that an unprecedented number of players were able to achieve high ranks by “ratting,” or avoiding fights until late game, that it affected the game’s balance.

In response, there’s a new ranked gameplay system, too, giving the game’s most dedicated players better matches (hopefully) with scoring based on the hidden “MMR” score that tracks how good you actually are. It will make climbing to a higher masters rank slower, according to the developers, but it should make finding games faster and more rewarding.

As a battle royale shooter, Apex Legends corrals surviving players together throughout the round with a closing ring that deals damage to anyone caught in it, and the ranked mode will add new tweaks to the damage and timing of its closing to discourage players from trying to outheal its damage and avoid encountering other players to place higher.

With an