At last, the Apex Legends Ranked Leagues have begun, finally giving players the chance to play competitively in the battle royale title. The first “series” of the Ranked Leagues will run alongside Season 2 and come to an end in September. (Though Respawn has said that they might not always run simultaneously to new seasons.) So, with that all said, here’s everything you need to know to get started with ranked play in Apex Legends!
How the Apex Legends Ranked Leagues Work
To start with, the first thing to know is that the Apex Legends Ranked Leagues are divided into six different ‘tiers’. These begin with Bronze, Silver, and Gold before continuing on to Platinum, Diamond, and finally, Apex Predator. Each of these six tiers contains a further four ‘divisions’. For example, Bronze contains Bronze I, Bronze II, Bronze III, and Bronze IV. (With the higher numbers being the lowest in each tier, so that Bronze I is the top tier of Bronze.)
To climb this competitive tiered ladder, players will need to play in ranked matches and perform well. As you play ranked you’ll earn Ranked Points (RP), which you must spend in order to compete in higher-ranked matches. Bronze matches cost nothing to enter, so you won’t ever get locked out. Silver matches cost 1RP and each tier adds an extra 1RP to the cost; Gold is 1RP, Platinum is 2RP, etc. This goes up to Apex Predator matches, which cost a total of 5RP to enter.
You’ll earn Ranked Points based on your match performance, both from kills and from final placement. Firstly, you’ll earn 1RP for each kill. However, there is a maximum cap of 5 for this score in every match. Secondly, if you place in the Top 10 in a match, you’ll earn 2RP. Finish in the Top 5 and you’ll get 4RP, or 7RP if you manage to place in the Top 3. Win a match and you’ll get a hefty 12RP reward. Note that the placement rewards aren’t cumulative. As such, if you win a match and also score 5 kills, you’ll earn the maximum match reward of 17RP!
Rising Up the Ladder in the Apex Legends Ranked Leagues
To enter a Ranked match, you must be at least level 10. Note that this applies to any other players in your party as well. Additionally, note that the matchmaker will match for the highest-ranked player in a group. This means that high-rank players can’t carry their teammates in lower-ranked tiers. Enter with a Diamond-rank player and you’ll be playing a Diamond tier match, even if you’re only Bronze-rank! When you first start playing in the Ranked League, you’ll start in Bronze by default; everybody has to start at the bottom, regardless of skill level. However, whenever you reach a new tier (Silver, Gold, etc.) you effectively lock in that tier. While poor performance can result in demotions between divisions (such as falling from Gold I to Gold II), you’ll never fall back to a previous tier.
Of course, Respawn is expecting many players to plateau towards the end of the season as they are consistently matches with players of comparable skill. So, don’t worry too much if your progression starts to slow down. Additionally, you don’t need to worry too much about unfortunate losses hurting your overall score, as the league does feature loss forgiveness.
This means that potential RP losses due to cost of entry will automatically adjust to 0 overall. For example, if you enter a Gold match (costing 3RP to enter), only get 1 kill, and fail to place in the top 10, you’d theoretically lose 2RP overall. However, loss forgiveness will set this back up to 0. This only applies if you would end a match with negative RP overall. Additionally, you may receive loss forgiveness if you’re abandoned by teammates mid-game, or in other circumstances where you aren’t to blame for leaving a match. (Such as a client error crashing the game.)
At present, there are no in-game rewards in Ranked Leagues besides rank badges. Every time you enter a new tier, you’ll earn a right to the badge for that tier, from Bronze up to Apex Predator. You’ll get a badge corresponding to the highest tier you reached when the series concludes. You can see the six badges in the image below. According to Respawn, the developers are working on extra rewards for future Ranked series. However, they’re not yet ready to talk about them. As such, it’s unknown as of yet what they might be. However, a fair guess would be that they could include special Legend or weapon skins.
Ranked Leagues are More Strict About Penalties
Players be warned; the Apex Legends Ranked Leagues have much harsher penalties for players who abandon matches. If you leave a Ranked match before it’s over, even during character select or while you are dead but could still be respawned, you’ll be given a matchmaking penalty that prevents you from joining both ranked and standard matches. The length of the penalty varies; abandon Ranked matches multiple times and the penalty timer will increase. It starts at five minutes, but rises quickly for repeat offenders. If you keep breaking the rules, you could get a ban which lasts for as long as a whole week!