If you thought you could wait until the end of the season to grind out your Apex Legends season 2 battle pass, think again. Redditor u/K_U did a breakdown of the new experience system and discovered that you are actually punished for trying to grind out the battle pass in a short amount of time.
This is due to the way that the new system essentially hands you easy levels each week through the weekly challenges, but then slows down massively once you have completed all the challenges for the week. Depending on the frequency with which you play the game, it is entirely possible that it will actually be harder to reach level 100 in Season 2 compared to Season 1, despite Respawn saying otherwise.
The way the new XP system works is that each week, you are given ten challenges that reward you with a full level, meaning you can earn ten levels each week and essentially reach level 100 in ten weeks by only doing these challenges.
Three of these challenges are added every week. You can complete them each week or save them for a few weeks and complete them all at once. There is no penalty for missing these challenges as long as you complete them before the end of the season; you will get the full experience either way.
The other seven challenges, however, reset every week. Two of these challenges reward you with a BP level for completing daily challenges during the week, the other five reward you a level for gaining a certain amount of XP: starting at 9k, then 18k, 27k, 36k, and finally a level for earning 45k experience.
According to u/K_U, once you have earned 45k in a week and completed all of your challenges, you will then gain levels at a rate of one per five hours of survival time. Compared to 82 minutes of survival time per level in Season 1, this is a significant increase.
Now, as long as you are consistently completing these weekly challenges, you will have no problem reaching max level, and in fact, it is significantly easier to do so in Season 2 compared to Season 1. Unfortunately, if you are unable to log on and complete at least these challenges each and every week, you're going to have a very hard time getting to level 100. As u/K_U puts it:
"Go on vacation for 1 week? There goes 7 of your "easy" levels, and now you are finishing in week 12. Have to work on the weekend unexpectedly? There goes another 7 "easy" levels, and now you better hope you have free time in week 13 to finish. If you miss 3 weeks or more you will need to grind at least one 54K XP / 5 hour BP level at the end of the season."
Clearly, the pass is designed to help the casual audience to reach max level by the end of the season. Unfortunately, this comes as a detriment to those players who were hoping to reach max level as fast as possible. It is unlikely anyone will be able to reach level 100 before at least week ten because the XP earned after completing the weekly challenges is just worth so very little. It is an interesting reinvention for the system, and you can be sure Respawn is watching closing and planning for future tweaks as the game continues to evolve and grow.