Apex Legends ranked changes deliver fundamental overhaul

Apex Legends: Arsenal will see the most significant change to ranked since 'Ranked Reloaded'. Key Apex Legends ranked changes include a new hidden MMR, equal entry costs across all ranks, new matchmaking rules and the removal of a mid season split.

Devs revealed that the key focus behind these Apex Legends Ranked Changes is creating competitive matches. Ranked has been a core complaint from Apex Legends players. Pro players feel like the system is uncompetitive. Casual players are tired of being treated as fodder due to loose matchmaking.

Speaking in the Season 17 media preview events, devs stated that their goal behind "overhauling the scoring system" was to deliver "more consistent and balanced matches". These changes are the "first of many changes this year", and Respawn wants to continue to develop the Ranked system from feedback.

On the face of it, this system seems designed to try and balance the desires of casual players, and higher skilled and professional players. The Season 13 'Ranked Reloaded' was very popular at the top level. Games were incredibly competitive. However, casual players found the system far too much of a grind to make meaningful progress in.

Now, devs hope that matchmaking will provide challenging lobbies for all players. But, the removal of splits and the placement match system will help casual players avoid feeling the need to 'grind'.

RP is no more. Taking it's place is a new LP system. This is short for 'Ladder Points', which will be the new metric to determine what rank you are.

Moving forward, Respawn want to move away from the pure 'points grind'. They have focused on a system that better reflects your true skill. To enable this, they are adding a new hidden MMR and several matchmaking changes. However, there will still be progression through ranks with the new LP score.

This new MMR will help match players to their true skill. MMR seems to be the end to smurfing, and 'Rookie to Masters' challenges. Now, instead of grinding through ranks, you will end up in lobbies that match you to players of similar skill.

To further aid this, there will also be ten placement matches at the start of the season. This system will be familiar to Apex Legends players. It is the same system that was used in the old Arenas ranked system. No longer will players have to farm 'easy' lobbies, until they hit their true rank.

One of the most significant changes to ranked matchmaking involves separating full squads from solo queue players. Playing Apex Legends ranked solo has often been a painful experience. Now, the game will attempt to match solo players together. Although, this will only be done where possible, with a balance being struck to keep queue times reasonable.

However, this will potentially make a huge difference to ranked lobbies. It is incredibly hard to compete with 3 stack teams as a solo queuer. The lack of communication between players is a huge disadvantage. A huge problem with previous ranked systems was a wide skill disparity in lobbies. Separating solo and stacked players should help to address a factor that enabled this.

A new look scoring system will focus on encouraging players to play to win the game. Teams dying early, and teams playing too heavily for kills, was another major complaint of previous systems.

Although, these Apex Legends ranked changes do not introduce 'kill cap' dissuade players from playing aggressively.

However, kills are not the only factor for adding points to the base placement point total. Now, there are new bonuses. These bonuses are factored from kills, assists, MMR performance and how challenging of a match you are in.

Also changing is how ranked is handled across a season. Apex has had multiple rank splits for some time. Historically, these included a changing of the ranked map. But, season 16 saw the introduction of a ranked 'map rotation'. Now, Respawn are shelving ranked splits entirely.

Devs say that this is to encourage engagement. Furthermore, placement matches will mean that there is no need to perpetually grind to keep up with other players. Historically, ranked sees spikes of engagement around splits. Either people grinding a new split, or players quickly trying to rank up before the end of a split.

Aside from the ranked system, a major complaint from players was cheating and boosting in ranked lobbies. In response to this complaint, you are now only rewarded for 'unique' kills, which eliminates the practice of respawn farming.

The account level requirement to play ranked will be raised to 50. Additionally, devs say that placement matches provide a better buffer to help identify cheaters. There has also been several anti cheat improvements behind the scenes.

There is no doubt that these Apex Legends Ranked Changes are much needed. Ranked engagement and satisfaction is at an all time low. Players are not motivated to play ranked. Many pro players have hardly touched ranked in the most recent split.

However, the results of these changes will only be seen in action. If these changes result in competitive lobbies and packed end games, then this system will be considered a success. But if not, Respawn has already indicated that these changes are just the beginning. Devs will be listening to feedback and tweaking the system accordingly in future.

Also arriving in Season 17 are Worlds Edge changes, a new survival item, an updated firing range, and a new legend.

Stay tuned to esports.gg for more Apex Legends coverage and esports news.