It has been a big year for Apex Legends. The game is as popular as it’s ever been, with fans flocking to try out new legends, new maps, and new modes. Early in the year, the game celebrated its third milestone, a major achievement for any live service game. Rather than resting on their laurels, the development team at Respawn Entertainment made sure that players always had something to look forward to.
Now that 2022 is coming to a close, we’re taking a look back at Apex‘s very best updates of the year. It’s a daunting task, as live games receive tens to hundreds of patches a year that bring changes as big as content updates and as small as minor bug fixes. Even so, we picked out the very best game-changing Apex updates to celebrate how far the game has come in just a single year.
Here are the best updates to Apex in 2022.
Best updates to Apex Legends in 2022
Season 13: Ranked Reloaded
Season 13, known as Saviors, introduced new legend Newcastle and provided the Monstrous update to Storm Point. Arguably the most important part of the new season patch, however, was Ranked Reloaded, a catch-all phrase describing sweeping changes to the way Apex‘s ranked system worked. According to a Respawn blog post, Ranked Reloaded’s goal was to more accurately determine player skill via the ranked tier system and encourage team play rather than solo efforts.
The update attempted to do this by removing the RP cap for kills, introducing tier demotions, increasing entry costs across all tiers (including bronze), adjusting RP gained for kills, and much more. This likely only scratched the surface of what the development team had to do under the hood to accommodate all these changes. While tweaks and adjustments continued to be made in future patches, including season 13’s midseason patch and season 14’s launch patch, Ranked Reloaded put structures into place that changed the way players experienced ranked.
Season 15: Broken Moon
Respawn generally releases one new battle royale map per year for players, and 2022 was no exception. This year, players were treated to Broken Moon, a map that exemplifies the development team’s “back to basics” level design approach while still pushing the envelope in interesting ways. It provides the same classic battle royale feel as some of the game’s earlier maps while introducing fun new elements.
Two of its biggest introductions were Zip Rails and extra-large POIs. Zip Rails are Broken Moon’s main mobility feature; they function like extended versions of ziplines that allow players to gain momentum as they rotate between POIs. They run mainly along the edges of the map and circle most of the game’s most important POIs. Extra-large POIs, on the other hand, are exactly what they sound like: POIs that cover an extended area and are roughly the size of two standard POIs put together. The goal with these massive structures was to reduce hot drops and give players enough time to loot before taking on a close fight with another squad.
While Broken Moon has only been out for a few weeks as of this writing, community response to it has been generally positive, especially from players who weren’t a fan of Storm Point’s sprawling locations and endless running. The dev team mentioned in a press Q&A that they made sure to leave room for new POIs and town takeovers on the map, so we’ll likely see a handful of updates next year.
Season 14: Kings Canyon Reforged
Broken Moon wasn’t the only map that was in the spotlight in 2022; in fact, enough maps received updates this past year that it would be reasonable to call it the Year of the Battle Royale Map. Kings Canyon is Apex‘s oldest map, and it was starting to feel a little out of date when compared to other battle royale maps. To bring it up to speed, Respawn released the wide-ranging Reforged update in season 14’s launch patch.
While Kings Canyon is still the same map at its core post-Reforged, the update changed it for the better in several ways. After season five’s destruction of Skull Town, which resulted in players clamoring for its return, Reforged introduced Relic, a Skull Town-like POI in the same location. The update also adjusted The Cage, Hillside, and Relay as well as several interior routes through the titular canyons with the goal of reducing third parties and giving players more choice over how and where they rotated. Thanks to Reforged, Kings Canyon is now bigger and fairer for players; the update also demonstrates the evolution of the development team’s level design philosophy since Apex‘s release.
Season 14: Level cap increase
While not as big or as flashy as some of the other updates on this list, the level cap increase introduced in season 14’s launch patch was undoubtedly one of the most important updates of the year, especially for longtime players. Prior to the update, Apex‘s levels capped out at 500, meaning players could no longer earn free Apex packs for leveling up beyond that.
With the cap increase, players can now effectively level all the way to 2,000, with an additional 345 free Apex packs available for doing so. This means that players can now earn enough free Apex packs via leveling to guarantee an Heirloom Shards drop, which is a literal game-changer. If you level all the way to 2,000, or “500 Tier 3” as the game calls it, you’ll have earned a total of 544 free Apex packs. The cap increase also introduced plenty of new level badges to show off longtime players’ dedication to the game.
Season 12: Introduction of Control
Who could forget about Control? Introduced as a limited-time mode (LTM) in season 12’s launch patch, it quickly became one of the Apex community’s most-loved modes. Players got the chance to participate in the closest thing the game has ever had to a team deathmatch mode. Two teams of nine faced off for control of three points on specific battle royale POIs, like Hammond Labs on Olympus. Infinite respawn and pre-selected loadouts kept things interesting.
After its initial three-week window of availability expired, players begged Respawn to bring the mode back—or even make it permanent. The development team ended up bringing it back for three additional events in 2022, and it remained a very popular mode and a great alternative to battle royale and Arenas. As of this writing, Respawn has no plans to make the mode permanent or introduce a permanent LTM rotation, as some players have suggested. That means that whenever Control appears again in the future, it’s sure to be a big draw for fans.
