The ranked experience in Apex Legends is no stranger to grand and sweeping adjustments, with Respawn Entertainment ever diligent in its attempts to improve the foundation it’s built upon. Even so, the overhaul coming to ranked in season 20 on Feb. 13 might be the biggest yet.
Next season, Apex’s ranked mode is returning to the Ranked Points (RP) system. With this system reinstituted, they plan to make changes to both scoring and matchmaking parameters—the hope being players will have a greater trust that their time is well spent. As lead progression designer Chris “C4” Cleroux described it in a recent press event, they want players to have “confidence that the system works in the way that we say it does.”
Everyone is getting their ranks reset down to 1 RP when the season starts. With so many changes coming via the legend upgrade system and the rework to Evo shields, Cleroux explained they wanted to make sure every player had the same opportunity “to learn, adapt and progress.”
“Philosophically, we focused on two foundational elements of design: trust and accessibility,” he said. That meant building new systems that rewarded players at all skill levels, which is where the adjustments to the scoring model come in.
“For Breakout, we’re adjusting the scoring model in a number of ways to push it towards being more rewarding for kills,” he said. However, Cleroux was quick to emphasize placement “still matters.” To navigate the delicate balancing act in season 20, placement is connected to the amount an elimination is worth. “Each elimination that you get will be worth a certain amount of RP,” he explained. “That value will increase with placement, so you can always decide to take fights with the knowledge that your elims are worth more the better you place.”
On top of this, two bonuses are being made available, which can further influence your RP gain per match. The first is a familiar “challenger bonus” that’ll grant additional points for eliminating players of a higher rank than you. The second is a streak bonus: If you can maintain a streak of top-five placements, you can gain bonus RP from that as well.
The scoring changes were the first of two main improvements that Cleroux wanted to focus on. “We constantly hear questions from our players about how our scoring system works, and why they got a certain score, and why their friends got certain scores,” he said. To further answer those questions, Respawn is also giving a “top-to-bottom revision” to the ranked match summary screen. “The goal for this revision is to show you exactly where your score comes from and create actionable feedback. A screen you can examine and understand how to improve your game.”
Better understanding the RP you’re gaining and losing is even more important in season 20 due to the big change coming to matchmaking at the same time. “For this season, your matchmaker will not use a hidden MMR value. It will instead use the player’s RP value. The more you play, the more your RP value will come to reflect your skill.”
Considering the breadth of the changes coming to ranked, Apex is also doing away with some elements that were not meeting expectations. “There are no provisional matches as part of Breakout. They don’t really make sense given how we’re starting off the season,” Cleroux said. “In addition to removing provisionals, we’re also removing promotional trials for now. They weren’t as fun or celebratory as we wanted them to be, so in Breakout, if you’ve got enough RP, you’re just going to get promoted to the next rank.”
It isn’t all cuts, though. Alongside the return of RP, splits are also coming back as part of Breakout. “We want to create a bit more of an exciting moment in the mid-season as players return to chase for their end of season rank.”
A lot of it sounds good on paper, but if the previously shaky introductions of other foundational shifts to ranked in the past are anything to go by, we won’t know for sure until the changes are live. However, with the recent patching out of controller configs and the debut of legend upgrades, the ranked experience could be shaping up to be a solid one this time around. Apex Legends season 20, Breakout, launches on Tuesday Feb. 13.
