Apex Season 20 Ranked sees return of popular scoring system

Apex Legends Season 20 will see yet another change to the ranked system. Ranked has been a controversial topic with the Apex community. Developers have battled to find a system that suits both the highest skilled players, and those in the much more casual community.

Season 18 saw the introduction of an MMR based system, with ranked no longer being impacted by your visible rank. This system has remained pretty unpopular, as evidenced by the complete overhaul revealed today.

Season 20 will see a complete overhaul of the previous ranked system. The MMR based ranked system is completely gone.

Here are the key details coming with the new changes:

Perhaps most excitingly, the term LP is no more. Points are once again called RP!

Apex devs hinted at this system "feeling familiar" to veteran Apex Legends players. A big nod towards the ever popular 'Season 13 Ranked system' that was especially favoured amongst professional and high level players.

This system awards far more points for eliminations than the current system. Players will be able to take fights early and still earn some RP, even if they don't make the very last squads. Like Season 13, the value of kills will increase as you progress through the match.

While the systems aren't identical, this system is clearly very similar to Apex Season 13 ranked.

The hidden MMR system proved confusing and unpopular amongst players. Developers directly addressed this, explaining that they want the ranked system to be transparent.

Because MMR drove your match making and scoring, sometimes players would get vastly different points from a match. You might surpass your teammates in rank, while playing in the same games and lobbies.

Now, ranked will be an easy to understand system with clear and transparent scoring.

This scoring closely resembles Season 13 ranked, but the values of kills or assists are different from that seasons system. ‘KP’ is worth slightly less than season 13, except if you win a game. The value of KP is actually higher when you win than when we last saw this system.

Respawns goal behind this system is two fold. Firstly, it is a clear and simple scoring system that everyone can understand. You’ll see your score increase during the match and you won’t get vastly different scores from your friends.

Secondly this system is designed to allow for players who wish to play for kills and players who wish to apply for placement to both be able to gain RP.

However ranked would not be enjoyable if players were not encouraged to try and win the game. To that end respawn introducing a bonus for finishing in the top five in back-to-back games.

Players will gain an increasing amount of RP as their streak extends. This bonus will be capped but in theory you could earn his bonus an unlimited amount of times, if you can reach the end of your matches consistently.

This will hopefully prevent the rank system from becoming more about kills and help strike a nice balance between both play-styles.

Premade parties will be matched by the highest Ranked player’s ranking. There is a new challenger bonus, for if you fight someone higher ranked than you.

There is no penalty or reduction in rewards for killing a lower ranked player. This is a significant change from Season 13.

There is another big similarity between this system and the Season 13 system. Just like at the start of Season 13, Apex Season 20 will see all ranked players starting from scratch.

This also means that there will no longer be provisional matches. Everyone will be starting from scratch at 1 RP. Expect the first week of ranked to be a bit spicy!

Another thing sorely missed by ranked players is Ranked Splits. These provide a cut off point for your rank, which is particularly liked by those ranked Masters and Predator. No splits means that to maintain the games top rank have to play for hours a day, for sometimes over 100 days straight.

For masters players, once the gap to those prestigious top 750 spots is too big, it could feel almost pointless to keep playing. Or at least, to take ranked seriously.

The reintroduction of splits should make it exciting for viewers who wish to watch the top ranked players battle it out for number one. As well as keeping the rank system fresh, enjoyable and engaging for everybody else.

Players will not be fully reset when the split occurs, and will instead be dropped by six divisions like the older ranked systems. A Master or Predator player would be ranked Platinum 2.

For the first split, the maps will be:

Are you excited for Apex Season 20 ranked? Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest Apex Legends and esports news.