Apex Skill Bonus: What does it mean?

Apex Legends Ranked awards "Ladder Points" in a variety of categories. Points are awarded from Placement, Eliminations and Skill. On top of Placement awards there are also Bonuses. These are divided into Elimination Bonuses, Rating Bonuses (on rare occasions) and the Apex Skill Bonus.

Placement and Eliminations are self explanatory, but what is the Apex Skill Bonus, and how do you get it?

The Skill Bonus is awarded based on your MMR in comparison to the MMR of the players you interact with, and the players in your lobby.

Respawn officially state it as "Skill Bonuses are given when your team interacts with a stronger opponent or performs exceptionally in an unfavorable match."

Simplified, if you are killing players that have a better MMR score than you, the game rewards you. If you have a lower MMR than the Lobby average, and place well, the game rewards you.

This means that the Skill Bonus is not guaranteed. The game will try to match you with players of a similar MMR, so in theory the Skill Bonus should be rare.

However, if you are in a pre-made squad, your friends might have a significantly different MMR. That means you could end up in lobbies that have lots of players with much higher MMR than you. Therefore, you should get an Apex Skill Bonus.

One of the most common complaints is when you've just won a tense ranked match, you head back to the lobby to see what you earned, and your squad got way higher rewards than you.

How come you can have drastically different rewards after an Apex Legends Ranked match?

The answer is once again that hidden MMR. If you're not getting much of an Apex Skill Bonus in comparison to your teammates you probably have a higher rating than they do.

Don't forget that your in game "rank" is completely uncoupled from your MMR. Three players could all be Silver 1, but have very different MMR's.

For more detail on the Apex Legends Ranked system, see our handy guide here.

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