Most Apex Legends players realized that ranked in season 17 was a bit of a joke. Respawn also recognized that fact, and it shared information today about how this season’s updates helped fix that—and how season 19 will feature even more ranked changes.
Ranked in season 17 was historic for all the wrong reasons. In a Reddit post, the dev team revealed the official ranked distribution from both Arsenal and the current season 18, Resurrection, revealing that in its official numbers of players that logged more than five hours of ranked in season 17, nearly 20 percent of that player base reached Master. This was due to ranked changes that enable players to quickly and effectively rank up simply by hiding and securing decent placements every game, eliminating the rank disparity that gun skill and fighting normally create.
Obviously, if you have a ranked system, you don’t want nearly a fifth of your players achieving the highest rank. It effectively rendered season 17’s ranked results null and void. Thankfully, the changes made at the beginning of season 18 to reduce some of the ladder points (LP) gained by achieving high placements in matches and also increase LP cost for joining games at higher ranks have balanced the ranked distribution back out.
Season 18’s distribution hasn’t created a perfect bell curve, but it’s certainly better than season 17.
The ranked distribution has swung back heavily toward Bronze and Silver—a bit too heavily. But it’s mostly just a relief to not see a repeat of what occurred the season before.
The ranked devs also detailed how they believe matchmaking has gotten better for solo players, noting that there’s been less disparity in match wins this season between solo players, two-stacks, and full three-person premade squads.
While these are mostly all big positives for Apex ranked, there are still a few things that could be better, and the dev team also acknowledged that in their list of changes planned for season 19.
First, the devs noted that players have taken longer than they initially expected to reach their “true rank” after their provisional matches, which are supposed to drop players a bit below where the game expects them to end up in order to give them something to grind towards. Accordingly, the devs want there to be less LP drop next season after provisional ranked matches are completed.
In a similar vein, the devs are introducing greater LP bonuses next season in an attempt to help players rank up a bit quicker as they grind the ladder.
Finally, Apex ranked won’t have any restrictions on full three-player squads in terms of disparity between teammate ranks. Master players can now rank with Bronze players if they want, with the understanding that the skill level of the lobbies they play in will trend much more closely to Master than Bronze.
This last change has split opinions so far. While many casual players love the idea of getting to play with their friends no matter what rank they are, this new wrinkle could also more easily allow cheaters to immediately get into high-ranked lobbies and quickly get their LP up.
Season 19 of Apex Legends is slated to begin on Oct. 31. We’ll see how the new ranked changes affect the mode when it officially launches.
