Of late, Apex Legends players have been left frustrated by the abuse of an exploit known as ‘dashboarding,’ which allows players to leave Ranked matches without taking the normal penalties for doing so. Given that there should be hefty penalties for quitting ranked matches early, this has understandably caused significant concern among the community. Fortunately, a senior developer at Respawn has now confirmed that a solution is in the works.
The Problem of Apex Legends Dashboarding in Ranked Play
Apex Legends Ranked Play features six tiers, ranging from Bronze all the way up to Apex Predator. To progress through these ranks, players need to consistently score well or win in matches, while avoiding losses. However, if players don’t complete a match, it becomes difficult to accurately gauge their rank placement. As a result, there are significant penalties for quitting a Ranked match early; a lengthy timeout which prevents players from joining new matches for a period of time. These penalties should ensure that players don’t quit matches in order to avoid a loss. (Or just because they don’t like their teammates.)
Unfortunately, it has been discovered that while these penalties do occur if you quit out of a match, they don’t occur if you shut down the game completely. Because doing so takes you back to a console’s dashboard, the practice has become known as ‘dashboarding’. However, it seems that a fix for this exploit could arrive soon. (Hopefully it arrives ahead of the 25th of January, when the Apex Legends Global Series begins!)
Asked by players online about how to report players who are dashboarding, Senior Systems Designer Eric Hewitt stated that players didn’t need to. Apparently, this is because the devs can see what’s going on from their end. His statement of “Judgement Day will be coming,” strongly suggests that a fix for this exploit is on the way. However, he didn’t confirm when it might arrive, so fans will have to wait and see for the time being.