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The Future Of Competitive Battle Royale is Looking Bright Thanks to the Apex Pre-Season…
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The Future Of Competitive Battle Royale is Looking Bright Thanks to the Apex Pre-Season Invitational
This past weekend Apex Legend’s put on their first major (non Twitch Rivals) tournament in the form of an invitational which brought 80 teams from around the world to compete for $500,000 in Krakow Poland. The event turned out to be three days of incredible victories, upsets, the birth of new stars, and ultimately a battle royale tournament worth watching. So what made this tournament different from any other battle royale event we’ve seen so far?
The answer is simple, format. The Pre-Season Invitational featured by far the best competitive battle royale format we’ve seen since battle royale games burst into the esports scene. To break it down, the format worked like this. 80 teams competed against each other in a double elimination style tournament. All the teams started out on an equal playing field and were split into four groups A B C and D. Once they were put into groups, groups A and B and C and D played matches consisting of 3 rounds. In each round teams earned points for each kill they obtained as well as getting placement points for reaching top 10, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and of course winning the round. After all three rounds were completed the top ten teams of the two groups moved on to the winners bracket and the bottom ten from the two groups moved on to the losers bracket with yet another chance to move on. Then the top teams from groups A and B and groups C and D combined becoming the winners top 20. These winning teams then similarly battled in a match consisting of 3 rounds with the top 10 moving on to grand finals and the bottom ten joining the losers bracket. Now the 20 teams in losers bracket got an opportunity to bounce back and the top 10 teams redeemed themselves and found their way to Grand Finals where the best of the winners bracket would compete with the best of losers bracket for a shot at being crowned champions. Now this is where it gets particularly exciting. Now normally you would expect the grand finals to work like the rest of the tournament right? Nope! In grand finals theres a bit of twist. In the grand finals teams have to reach a threshold of 50 points where they are now considered at “match point.” This means, that in order to actually win the tournament you have to then win a full round while having the neccessary 50 points. This creates a dynamic where you cant just win by camping and playing the statistics game, you actually have to play aggressively if you want to win it all. At one point nearly half the teams in grand finals had match point but the tournament kept going simply because other teams not at match point kept winning the round thus extending the tournament and other team’s chance at victory. Finally the infamous TSM clutched out a victory and the tournament concluded, but even then the top 3 teams in what would end up being the final round, consisted of a team not at match point and another team that could have stolen the tournament from TSM creating this tense and exciting moment where players and viewers alike dont know whether or not we are about to crown a champion? Or if the tournament will keep going.
Now I know that was a lot of information but learn it well ladies and gentlemen because I can almost guarantee that this will be the standard format for battle royales going forward. This format solves nearly all the problems competitive battle royale has faced. Many complained that previous formats slowed down the pace of the game and that there is simply too much RNG in the gameplay to definitively prove if a player or team won by either skill or just because they got luckier than everyone else. The pre-season invitational format solves all of that. Teams have ample opportunities to prove themselves so even if you have an unlucky round you’d have to be consistently playing bad for it to matter. Not to mention it is double elimination so one bad set of matches doesnt mean it’s the end of the road for you. The grand finals format is even better because no matter what the tournament doesnt end until you actually gain the points AND earn a victory definitively proving that you played better than everyone else.
Now the future may be looking bright for competitive battle royale but unfortunately it may not be looking bright for Apex Legends per se. The game is still suffering from lack of viewership and playerbase. In fact this amazing tournament only peaked at 40k viewers which is a meager effort compared to The Overwatch League which maxes at a little over 100k and League of Legends which during its annual Worlds tournament can reach max viewership well over half a million. Sadly the reality of this tournament is that the people over at Epic Games likely had they’re eyes on what happened this past weekend and will likely start using the format themselves in upcoming tournaments. If your an Apex fan this is disheartening as you know that this would probably be the nail in the proverbial coffin, but if your a Fortnite fan you should rejoice as the competitive Fortnite scene is about to explode in ways none of us saw coming not too long ago.
Either way the pre-season invitational was a monumental step forward in competitive battle royale and although it had some missteps, with Brutal hours for the competitors, a rather strict meta with practically all teams opting for the Watson, Pathfinder, Wraith team composition, and some questionable in game camera work where the technical directors seemed to favor spectating big name teams instead of following the action. Still however, it was an event that got me excited about battle royale in a way no other tournament has done before. All and all the folks at EA and Respawn should be patting themselves on the back because they nailed it with this tournament.

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