No shooting necessary.
A day after promising to complete a solo-queue no-damage challenge climb to Predator in Apex Legends on May 9, NRG’s Chris “sweetdreams” Sexton has already completed his journey. That was fast.
The idea came after many of the game’s top players discovered that the new ranked system introduced with season 17 has a glaring flaw: It isn’t punishing enough. It’s too easy to climb the ranked ladder and extremely hard to fall, and that’s been made even more evident by many players simply choosing to hide from other teams in their games.
While many of the game’s best wanted placement to matter more after multiple seasons of ranked turning into a kill race, it seems things have swung too far in the other direction. Despite dealing zero total damage and recording no kills to go with the 48 times he’s died in season 17, Sweet is officially the 153rd best ranked player in the world.
Related: About time: Sweetdreams applauds Respawn for finally making vital Apex ranked change
And honestly? The pacifist run to Predator was pretty fun. While viewers weren’t treated to any tense teamfights, that didn’t prevent drama from unfolding on their screens as Sweet eluded players trying to take him down. Some teams even paid dearly for it, like one on Kings Canyon so intent on chasing Sweet across the map that they ignored the closing ring, and swiftly died when they couldn’t follow his tricky flight path through a choke near The Cage.
The speed with which Sweet made Predator will no doubt lead some Respawn devs to start looking at dials to fiddle with in the new ranked system. There are clearly some more issues to iron out, and it doesn’t seem likely that anyone wants to reward this type of gameplay for too long, including the players that are turning ranked into hide and seek.
However, even if it was just for a day, leave it to the Apex community to turn something as boring as running away from every possible fight you see into must-watch entertainment.