APEX LEGENDS RANKED GETS RELOADED WITH THE LAUNCH OF SAVIORS!
Check out a full breakdown of the big updates coming to Ranked play with the launch of Saviors.
INTRODUCTION
Greetings, we are excited to share updates to Apex legends Ranked in Saviors!
Apex Legends’ battle royale Ranked queue began in Season 2, and since then, the player base has grown and matured significantly. In turn, the Ranked experience needs to evolve, and the launch of Saviors introduces the first of several steps we are taking to improve Ranked for everyone.
The current Ranked goals revolve around two main pillars:
- Teamplay for Victory
- Accurate Skill & Better Competition
We are making a large number of changes that focus around these two core pillars, with the outcome that:
- Players will focus on playing as a team, and playing for the win.
- RP will be a more accurate representation of your overall game skill.
TEAMPLAY FOR VICTORY
Play for the Team
At Apex Legends’ core is a team-based game, so players should be rewarded at the team level. Now everyone on a team will receive some RP when one of them gets a kill.
Play for the Win
Apex Legends is a battle royale. Survival is the primary objective, and kills are what gets you there. Placing any limits on kills rewards puts an unintended emphasis and pressure on hitting these limits. So we are taking a different approach:
REMOVED: Kill RP Cap is removed
NEW: Base value of each kill is worth increasingly less, down to a minimum
Assist Rules
The current assist timer of 10 seconds is too short, allowing for simple retreats to break the timer. This creates unnecessary tension and is counterproductive to survival and winning the game.
CHANGE: Assist Timer: 10 seconds → 15 seconds
Following up on the revive assist marker change last in Defiance, we are also adding a ‘refresh’ to assist timer when a player is revived. With this change, if an enemy you helped knock is revived and immediately downed again by one of your allies, you'll still be eligible for an assist credit.
NEW: Assist Timers are refreshed upon player’s revival
ACCURATE SKILL & BETTER COMPETITION
Tier Demotions
Your ranking is important and should be accurate when it comes to representing your current skill. Having the ability to demote out of a tier will allow a player’s skill to be reflected with more precision. In Saviors, we are introducing tier demotions with the goal of addressing the current struggle some players experience when they get promoted to a new tier but cannot climb higher in the ranks.
Demotions will create a better true distribution of skills across the ladder. Players will get demotion protection for three games. Once demotion protection is exhausted, dropping below the tier threshold will trigger a demotion penalty, dropping the player halfway down the previous division. (I.e. Masters → 50% of Diamond 1)
Similar to Ranked Arenas, rewards will be granted based on the highest RP threshold achieved.
MODIFIED: Tier Demotion Protection available up to 3 games lost after promotion into a higher tier
NEW: Players can demote out of a tier, halfway down to the previous division. (Masters → 50% of Diamond 1)
NEW: 100 RP Tier Promotion Bonus
Entry Cost Adjustments
There are two types of players within a tier: those who can consistently gain RP, and those who cannot. To smooth out this skill gap, we are adjusting entry costs across all divisions. Additionally, we are adding new entry cost breakpoints within the Master+ tiers to further filter for skill.
Modified: Entry cost increases on promotion into a new division
NEW: Masters+ entry costs further increase with total RP (5 RP every 1000 RP beyond Master Threshold up to 175 RP)
| Division | | | | |
|---|
| 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
|---|
| Bronze | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24 |
| Silver | 27 | 30 | 33 | 36 |
| Gold | 39 | 42 | 45 | 48 |
| Platinum | 51 | 54 | 57 | 60 |
| Diamond | 63 | 66 | 69 | 72 |
| Master | 75 | | | |
Kill RP
We simplified and adjusted the Per Kill RP mechanics, and are now directly presenting the base kill values by placements.
In a battle royale, placing worse than the bottom half of the lobby is losing. Placements and kills are both important metrics in Ranked. Having kills without the placement should not constitute a success. In response, we have pulled down Kill RP gains for placing worse than 10th. Players placed in this region are likely to lose RP.
At the same time, having good placements with little to no kills will cause players to miss out on a majority of their RP rewards coming from the previously mentioned Kill RP changes.
Kill Tier Differences
With the introduction of scaling entry costs and kill participations, we are softening the skill based RP modifiers on kills.
Modified: Killing a lower tier player grants slightly less reduced RP
| Tier Differences | S12 Kill Modifier | S13 Kill Modifier |
| -3 | 30% | 30% |
| -2 | 50% | 70% |
| -1 | 80% | 100% |
| 0 | 100% | 100% |
| 1 | 120% | 100% |
| 2 | 150% | 150% |
| 3 | 200% | 200% |
Introductory Tier
Bronze was the only tier without an entry cost. Any invested player would eventually climb out of it. So we are introducing a new tier: Rookie. This tier will sit below Bronze to act as a proper one time only, introductory tier to Ranked, and will not have any Ranked rewards associated with it. Existing players are unaffected by the introduction of the Rookie Tier, and can not be demoted into it, and likewise will not be reset into it on new splits or seasons.
NEW: Introductory ‘Rookie’ tier
MODIFIED: Bronze now has entry costs
RP Thresholds
To account for the increased influx of RP, we are adjusting RP thresholds for each tier and division to keep the difficulty and effort to achieve them relatively the same.
Modified: RP thresholds for all tiers and division adjusted. Length of each division is increased by 200RP
3rd Party Kill Stealing Fix
We have fixed a long standing issue where kill credits were unintentionally transferred from eliminated teams. Previously, when Team A downs players from Team B, and Team A is subsequently eliminated, players from any team can misappropriate these downed players on Team B for kill credits by executing them, regardless of their involvement in the initial conflict. This issue has been fixed and these kills are now properly voided. Kills are earned, not given.
CONCLUSION
This update is the first step in our ongoing journey to evolve and improve the Ranked experience. We’re excited for you all to get a chance to play with these changes when Saviors launches on May 10th.
Thank you for reading, and playing!
- the Apex Legends team
Boss Mog
I totally agree about devs in general catering to esports and a niche high skill crowd. I've said the same about Halo, it's great for weapon and skills balancing but it gets too much when uber aim trumps a solid strategy or ultimate warmed up sweat squad is required every game in every mode. I'm forever grateful of devs like Respaws delivering server choice and the population to play such games within Australia. Amazing dev support there but I'd be lying if I didn't say that the population in Australia gets condensed to where we are playing diamonds, masters and preds in gold lobbies. When you factor in smurf accounts it can get worse. I suppose that's the effects of going in a full made squad, we're pitted against the teams from the population. When I go in solo I find games are far easier in terms of made teams or skills etc, party matching doing work.
8BiTw0LF
Nice to know a master still cannot find a weapon sometimes. Solid turn around there mate. I cannot do the higher FOV though. I'm a baseline guy, my awareness if fine but I just don't like the skewing effects of high FOV.
bodyshots and strafing is my game now. I also think it's harder to get headshots in Apex compared to CoD, Halo or Destiny - but they also have more aim-assist and not the same difference in movement and character variations. Headshotting a Wraith and a Gibraltar is two different "aims".
