Apex Legends recently launched Season 2, which also brought balance changes. Another new feature that arrived with Season 2 is the Ranked Leagues. Through this new feature, Apex Legends hopes to give players a more fun experience with the game.
There are four main goals in introducing Ranked Leagues to Apex Legends:
- Rewarding competitive players for the time they invest in the game.
- This is made possible by having a ranked ladder that shows how a player stacks up against the rest of the Apex Legends playerbase. At the end of the season, players then get to receive in-game rewards based on the rank they achieved.
- Ensuring competitive integrity through skill-based matchmaking.
- Players can't really say they are the best if all they do is simply beat down n00bs in Skulltown. The matchmaking in Ranked Leagues puts focus on making sure that players with similar skills are in the same match. It is possible that players won't be matched with those in the same tier, but it will be as close as possible based on the region and time of day. Silver players, for example, could be matched with Gold players.
- Creating space at the top of the ladder for the best players to establish a high-skill meta without forcing a playstyle.
- This goal is to reward match placement and kills, but with some specific limits. Those who play support or even practice strategic gameplay shouldn't be rewarded less simply because they are getting less than 15 kills per game. Ultimately the approach when it comes to scoring is that the focus should be on winning.
- Creating a true measure of skill in Apex Legends.
- While Apex Legends is trying out a score-based ranked system, don't expect that it can continue that way. The Apex Legends team revealed that they are closely watching Ranked players to see what determines success on the ladder, what type of players are able to climb the ladder quickest, and how the high-skill metagame plays out. Thus, the goal is to use data from the launch of the Ranked Leagues and slowly make adjustments.
The Apex Legends team sent out a reminder that players who abandon Ranked matches are going to be penalized not only with a matchmaking penalty, but get any potential RP gains zeroed out. That’s not all, as players are also required to pay an additional penalty RP cost equal to their match entry cost. As an example, suppose a Gold player has four kills and would have finished in the top five, but decides to abandon the match on purpose. That player is going to be get zero RP for kills and placement, pay the two RP entry cost, and pay another two RP abandon penalty cost.
You can read the complete discussion on the new Ranked Leagues and how the scoring system works here.
