Season 13 of Apex Legends featured “Ranked Reloaded,” sweeping changes to how the game’s ranked mode worked and how ranked points were gained or lost. One split into these changes, Respawn has tweaked the changes, still dissatisfied with the spread of players throughout the ranked tiers.
Now, ranked is changing once again in season 14, with RP costs going back up a bit across all tiers of play and the game doing away with the diminishing returns for kills that Respawn introduced in season 13.
The patch notes for season 14 let players in on the ranked distribution from each split in season 13 and how the changes to the ranked system affected where players ended up. Across the board, the season 13 ranked changes brought the vast majority of the player base down in rank, with Diamond and Platinum going from representing more than 65 percent of the ranked players who played more than 10 hours of the mode in season 12 to just over 15 percent of players in the first split of season 13.
The ranked adjustments in between splits in season 13, which lowered entry costs for every tier and also softened the ranked split reset, did succeed in putting more players into the game’s highest tiers of play, which were starved of players for long stretches last season. Apparently, this upward shift still wasn’t enough.
In season 14, kills will once again play a massive role in the amount of RP players will win from a game. The days of losing RP for finishing in 11th or 12th place with 10 kill points are most likely over and upward mobility will most likely be easier for players. To compensate for this, the RP costs were increased a bit and the game’s tier demotion remains in place to punish players who hot drop game after game in hopes of a high-elimination game.
It’s still too early to tell just how these changes will affect ranked once again, but for now, expect faster-paced games in ranked when Apex season 14 drops tomorrow, Aug. 9, at 11am CT.
Published: Aug 8, 2022 12:54 pm