Apex Legends has cultivated a huge international community through countless events and nine successful seasons, making it among the best free-to-play battle royales on the market. With the addition of Apex Arenas alongside the start of season nine, the game is on track to keep growing even bigger. As each new season is rolled out, the team at Respawn Entertainment adds a new playable Legend to the mix along with a handful of other features including guns, game modes, and maps. While adding new characters each season has done a great deal to vary the gameplay over time, it might do the game well to not add another Legend for season ten.
If Apex Legends is going to continue being successful, it might need to lay off the new Legends. While adding new characters to the game has done a lot to constantly shake things up as time goes on, there are diminishing returns for how successful that strategy will be moving forward as the roster begins to feel a little crowded.
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Something interesting about Apex that isn't found in most other class-based competitive shooters is there are really no wrong choices when it comes to picking a character. Sure, some Legends are seen as more competitively viable than others, but those who choose to main the less popular Legends are able to give other "more competitive" characters a run for their money if used properly. This is largely in-part thanks to how well-balanced Apex Legends is overall, but as more characters are added with each season, balance problems have begun to arise. Some Legends are really balanced, while others have been overpowered and promptly nerfed into obscurity.
It would make sense for Respawn to take its foot off the gas in terms of adding Legends, and take a season to truly balance the game's meta instead of adding more. As it stands right now, there are 17 different characters to pick from in Apex Legends, and while there are other class-based games with rosters even bigger than that, the battle royale is beginning to feel overcrowded. Looking to the future of the game four or five seasons from now, keeping upwards of 20 characters balanced and usable seems like a tall order, and the ceiling for how many Legends Respawn can balance is approaching. Focusing on stability for a season might be worth it, as Apex Legends is generally pretty balanced. However, it could come crashing down with the addition of another character.
If Apex Legends were to go an entire season without the addition of a new Legend, one fear is the game would start to stagnate while it's being rebalanced. Although that fear is certainly warranted, Respawn adds enough new content consistently that the game most likely wouldn't be hit hard if the studio worked on adding more to compensate for the lack of a new Legend. Other seasons of Apex have added new weapons, playlist types, and maps or map variants, with the most recent season adding a fully supported game mode.
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If the focus were to shift from adding new Legends with the hopes of changing the game to altering or adding other elements to the same effect, Respawn would be able to increase the lifespan of the game significantly. The difference between quality and quantity is something that many enthusiasts can take notice of, and the newly added Apex Arenas is a perfect example of this.
Apex Arenas has shown fans Respawn is devoted to supporting the game. Adding a new game mode isn't something done at the drop of a hat, but it almost feels like its addition was big enough that season nine didn't need an additional Legend too for fans to be satisfied. The reception to the mode was warm, and usually so is the reception to the map updates that come with each season. If a game-changing map update were to come to season ten alongside a playlist update to Arenas, those two things seem like plenty of great content to kick off the season.
One other thing contributing to the Legend problem Apex might be facing is how having too many characters might impact accessibility. It's often daunting for new players to pick up online games years after they've been released because of how much content, lore, and meta they have to catch up on. As Apex continues adding characters, newcomers to the game are likely going to be overwhelmed and turned off by the sheer number of characters to learn. Pair that with the fact that only six are free from the get-go and Respawn is starting to create an environment that isn't conducive for onboarding beginners.
This isn't to say that Apex needs to stop adding new Legends, just that slowing the pace down might do well to help the game grow. It might also be worth it to allow players to try out every Legend in the firing range before buying them so newcomers can understand their abilities before purchasing them.
No matter what's in store for Apex Legends season ten, it's likely going to be whatever is best for the game as decided by the people most qualified: Respawn. If rolling out more Legends is part of some grand scheme that the public isn't privy to, hopefully the game gets to reap the potential success that it's sowing before there comes a major problem with too many characters.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Xbox One.