'Apex Legends' Season 2 Changes Copy 'Fortnite's Most Popular Feature

When Apex Legends launches Season 2 next month, it’ll introduce a new spin on the Fortnite feature that’s been key to keeping players engaged and engrossed in that Battle Royale game: Daily and weekly challenges.

During Saturday’s EA Play event at E3 2019, Respawn Entertainment announced that Season 2, dubbed “Battle Charge,” would launch on July 2, but over the next weeks, players can already enjoy challenges unique to an in-game event.

“The next season of the massively popular battle royale game will introduce an electrifying new Legend, a ranked mode, a fresh Battle Pass complete with daily and weekly challenges, and much more,” an official press release reads.

“For now, players can prove they’re the ultimate predator in the Legendary Hunt in-game event, now through June 18,” the announcement continues. “Complete limited-time challenges to score Rare, Epic and even more Legendary skins for weapons and Legends.”

Apex Legends Season 2 will also have a brand-new Legend: Natalie “Wattson” Paquette.

New weapons and new playable characters, however, were already a part of Season 1. Daily and weekly challenges, however, are new to the game and necessary for Apex Legends to evolve and grow its player base.

With the release of Season 1, Lead Product Manager Lee Horn said, “there’s really cool design space in quests and challenges for future Battle Passes.” Given the lackluster response to Season 1 after the initial hype wore off, challenges for Season 2 became a necessity.

Fortnite remains the undisputed king of battle royale games in terms of player base and revenue, thanks in large part to its robust, challenge-focused seasonal gameplay.

Every day, Fortnite gets three simple new daily challenges. Every week, players with a premium battle pass get access to seven new weekly challenges. And every 10-12 weeks, a new season of Fortnite begins, updating the map and adding new features to keep players interesting.

I’ve played a lot of both games, and while I prefer the core combat mechanics in Apex Legends and its cast of characters, something about the way Fortnite psychologically programs its players to return again and again with these challenges is much more effective in terms of holding your interesting.

With Season 2, Apex Legends hopes to keep players engaged in the same way, and there’s an opportunity to do it even better than Fortnite by having these challenges focus on playable characters. When Wattson is released with Season 2, Apex Legends will have 10 playable characters. Whereas many Fortnite challenges make players dance on, near, between, or around different inanimate objects, Apex Legends can do something more interesting by having players do certain things with specific characters a number of times.

“Get 10 kills as Bangalore.” “Travel 100m with a single Pathfinder zipline.” “Use Wraith’s dimensional rift four times in a single match.” These random ideas already sound much more exciting than your average Fortnite challenge. We’ll know more when Season 2 kicks off next month.

Apex Legends Season 2 begins July 2.