Since Respawn Entertainment began talking about Apex Legends Season 13: Saviors, it has been mentioned time and again that Ranked was getting some changes. This has been dubbed “Ranked Reloaded.” Now, ahead of the season 13 launch, Respawn has finally revealed the entire breakdown of the coming changes in Apex Legends' Ranked gameplay.
Namely, these changes are based on two pillars for Apex Legends: to focus on playing as a team and playing for the win, as well as being a better representation of a player’s overall game skill. First and foremost, all Apex Legends players on a team will get some RP whenever someone gets a kill. The Kill RP cap in Apex Legends has been removed, with the RP value of each kill adjusted.
The assist timer has also been lengthened, while players will still receive assists off of opponents who are revived but instantly knocked again. These changes are great for the moment to moment gunplay of Apex Legends, but perhaps the biggest change this season will be Ranked Demotions. This is to ideally prevent players from becoming hard stuck at a Rank that they cannot seem to climb up in or surpass, to better reflect the player’s skill in the game.
Apex Legends players will have Demotion protection for three games, presumably after hitting a new tier, but after that, they can be demoted if they drop below the threshold. This will knock them halfway down the previous rank. Respawn uses the examples of Masters dropping to 50% of Diamond 1, but players will also receive a 100 RP Tier Promotion bonus when they go up a tier. There are a lot of changes coming to Ranked, to say the least, and interested parties can see the number-by-number breakdown HERE.
Other Apex Legends changes include a new Rookie Tier (which is to introduce players to the Ranked mode), Bronze entry costs, RP adjustments across each division, and a new third party killing fix. “Kills are earned, not given,” Respawn writes, so if Team A knocks players on Team B, but then gets wiped out, other teams cannot simply finish off Team B for kill credits.
Overall, it’s a lot to unpack. The changes do sound like they’ll be good for players once Apex Legends Saviors launches on May 10, and it’ll be interesting to see all of this in practice.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Mobile releases worldwide in May.