Publisher Electronic Arts is testing the waters for a new competitive tournament system. The patent for the new esports tournament layout makes mention of how modern battle royale tournaments can become boring for viewers, as the end result can become obvious after just a few rounds.
Electronic Arts' new system will reinvigorate Apex Legends competitive play by ensuring players meet a 'victory condition' during the tournament, so competitors can't win through only sneaky, efficient play. The contestants will have to perform some kind of secondary objective to win, meaning even if they win enough rounds to take the tournament, they won't be crowned victor until that secondary condition is met.
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While the document detailing this is vague on the exact details, viewers of professional competitive Apex can expect to see some more diverse head-to-head battles in the future. Seeing as the first official Apex tournament was a fairly mundane affair, despite the result being so close. Viewers can now look forward to some exciting, specialized tournament play. High level players will have to test more than their accuracy when the new modifiers are introduced.
Most interestingly, the patent discusses how players will be able to earn points towards winning through less-obvious methods, like ranking on distance travelled or damage taken. This scoring system is meant to give viewers more moments to look forward to, while rewarding the competitors for less-obvious plays. For example, points for damage dealt, and taken, will give fights more of a sliding-scale effect rather than the all-or-nothing presented by other competitions.
Ultimately, this ties to EA's core point in its brief: "This can result in increased player and viewer engagement... because it is uncertain who will win the tournament until the victory condition(s) are met." EA is looking at creating exciting content that stands apart from its competitors.
No timescale has been given on this set of competitive changes, but it does suggest that EA is beginning to lean into its premier battle royale's broadcast side. After 8 seasons of new content, and ports to every major platform, Apex has accrued a massive playerbase with record-breaking concurrent numbers. Missing out on an streaming audience of such a caliber has been one of Apex's biggest blunders, especially paling in comparison to Epic's Fortnite. With this new set of applications, EA seems ready to make some major moves on the esports side of Apex Legends.
The online audience available to titles like Apex Legends is only growing with time. EA is not the first to try and lay the groundwork to get a slice of this digital pie – Riot Games' broadcast of Worlds 2020, its flagship tournament for League of Legends, had a global viewership nearing 4 million in the final match. Activision, publishers of the Call of Duty series, have recently renewed a patent for it's own tournament infrastructure.
Apex Legends isn't showing any signs of slowing down any time soon, and EA seems set on pushing Respawn's title even further into the limelight. It is a competitive market, facing off against other industry giants, as well as the largest streaming site itself, and only time can tell how EA's plot to grab some screen time from this melting pot will go.
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Source: USPTO