We don’t want to alarm you, but Respawn Entertainment has just detailed some Apex Legends Season 18 Ranked changes that will make climbing up Apex Legends’ ranks even harder than it was last season. Yeah, those of you stuck in Gold, we know what you’re thinking. The Apex Legends Season 18 release date is almost upon us and this declaration of changes feels like the first in a series from the battle royale developer. However, is this really the right step for one of the best FPS games out there? Well, Apex Legends‘ developer has reasons.
As you can see in this Ranked Dev Blog from Respawn Entertainment, the TLDR of these Ranked changes is this: “LP gains per match will be decreased”.
Respawn hasn’t detailed what values we’re looking at moving forward, but it has explained why it thinks this is the right call.
“We intended [Season 17] to be a learning experience… The combo of this and some bugs in the Ranked system caused Ladder Point gains to be extremely generous, resulting in an excess of Masters players”.
If you want to know what Respawn means, it has shared a graph – which you can see below – showing the Rank distribution. To its credit, there is quite a bit of an unusual weight in Masters. However, there’s also a lot of players still stuck in Bronze 2, Bronze 1, Silver 3, and Silver 4.
In an effort to combat this, Respawn is specifically going to add a “minimum elimination bonus increase” based on your MMR – something that’s going to be separate from any witheld bonuses you might have – to try and make sure you’re regularly seeing bonuses (but, not extravagant ones).
Is this going to help Apex Legends cement itself as the best battle royale game available right now? Well, it’s quite hard to say right now. We know this is one of the best competitive FPS games out there at the moment, and Respawn Entertainment’s attentiveness to the issues of the game’s Ranked mode is a huge part of that. However, the changes Respawn makes don’t always land as smoothly as it would like.
So, really, only time will tell – in this case – whether these changes improve the experience. However, the reasoning is there and Respawn has also detailed how it’s planning to encourage in-ring action in the later stages of a game. It’s also going to adjust ring timing and combat “ratting” spots throughout Season 18. Oh, and (of course) further improve the matchmaking system.
We know each individual change can sound dramatic, but it’s all conducive to crafting a well-balanced Ranked system that accurately places people with ample – but not too much – opportunity to improve and climb. It wants to “deliver the best Ranked BR experience in the world”; that’s just going to take a little more fine tuning.
So, while you wait, why not read up on how Apex Legends has kicked off its Revenant rework teasers with one of the best animated shorts we’ve ever seen from the developer so far? Trust us, the sheer quality of this one makes it worth watching.