Apex Legends Fight Night Update Makes Welcome Ring Closure Change

The latest event in Apex Legends, Fight Night, is now live. The new limited-time event adds a Pathfinder-themed town takeover to Olympus, a brand-new mode, over two dozen legendary and epic cosmetics, and makes several quality of life adjustments to the in-match meta. Of note, there's a particularly interesting adjustment to how ring closure works.

In order to address the chaotic nature of the last few fights in a match, developer Respawn is tweaking how the ring closes for rounds five and six. Ring 5 is now a bit bigger, expanded from a 1500 unit radius to a 2000 unit radius, though it still closes at the same rate. And Ring 6 is now the final ring of every match, closing over the course of 100 seconds.

This change completely removes Rings 7 and 8, which were traditionally only seen in a handful of matches anyway because most squads were killed off and a winner decided by Rings 5 or 6. But when multiple teams did manage to survive that long, those final rings were always a cluster of character abilities and shotgun/submachine gun fire--any squad with a surviving Caustic and his ultimate ability at the ready was practically guaranteed to take the win.

Granted, Ring 6 is still somewhat small and it regularly accomplishes its task of pushing the remaining squads into a final fight. But it still allows room for some strategic movement and skill beyond spray and pray, so stopping ring closure here is a welcome change. For context, Ring 6 usually provides a safe area with a diameter of 40m, while Ring 7 was 4m, and Ring 8 was less than 1m.

The ring closure is the most notable quality of life change in the new Fight Night update, but there are a few other shout-outs as well in the full patch notes. The long-asked for button to remove all the red dots from your menu has been added--simply press "Mark All Seen" when in the Legends or Loadout tabs. Additionally, pinging a respawn beacon will now mark the closest beacon even if that beacon is outside the next safe zone, but only provided your teammates can reach the beacon and respawn you before the next ring engulfs it.

Fight Night continues until January 19 and the Season 7: Ascension battle pass will be available until January 26. Season 7 will conclude alongside Year 2, with Season 8 kicking off Apex Legends Year 3.