As we are at the tail end of season 12 of Apex Legends, Respawn has finally given us more information regarding the upcoming season 13 called “Saviors.”
Similar to every new season starting in season 2, Apex Legends has introduced new ranked rewards for competitive players to grind throughout the whole season. Since this battle royale game has multiple maps, the ranked portion of the battle royale mode is usually played on two completely different maps on two different splits.
This ranked split basically occurs in the middle of the season, and it resets some ranked progression. So, players can climb the ranked ladder on two different splits to collect additional rewards.
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Apex Legends Season 13 Ranked Updates
Starting from Season 13, in Apex Legends ranked mode, players can climb eight distinct ranks. It will start from Rookie, the newest addition to the Rank Tiers, to Apex Predator. Players need to spend RP (ranked points) to join a ranked lobby.
Since Season 2, Respawn has made many small changes to the Ranked Mode. However, in Season 13, Apex Legends’ Ranked Mode will go through a drastic change, which will make the players change their playstyle significantly. The changes that Respawn is making are:
TEAMPLAY FOR VICTORY
Play for the Team
Dev Notes: Apex Legends’ core is a team-based game, so players should be rewarded at the team level.
Now, everyone on a team will receive some RP when one of them gets a kill.
Play for the Win
Dev Notes: Apex Legends is a battle royale. Survival is the primary objective, and kills are what get you there. Placing any limits on kill rewards puts an unintended emphasis and pressure on hitting these limits. So Respawn is taking a different approach.
REMOVED: Kill RP Cap is removed
NEW: The base value of each kill is worth increasingly less, down to a minimum.
Assist Rules
Dev Notes: The current assist timer of 10 seconds is too short, allowing for simple retreats to break the timer. This creates unnecessary tension and is counterproductive to survival and winning the game.
CHANGE: Assist Timer: 10 seconds → 15 seconds
Dev Notes: Following up on the revive assist marker change last in Defiance, we are also adding a refresh’ to the assist timer when a player is revived. With this change, if an enemy you helped knock is revived and immediately downed again by one of your allies, you’ll still be eligible for an assist credit.
NEW: Assist Timers are refreshed upon the player’s revival
ACCURATE SKILL & BETTER COMPETITION
Tier Demotions
Dev Notes: Your ranking is important and should be accurate when it comes to representing your current skill. Having the ability to demote out of a tier will allow a player’s skill to be reflected with more precision. In Saviors, we are introducing tier demotions with the goal of addressing the current struggle some players experience when they get promoted to a new tier but cannot climb higher in the ranks.
Demotions will create a better, truer distribution of skills across the ladder. Players will get demotion protection for three games. Once demotion protection is exhausted, dropping below the tier threshold will trigger a demotion penalty, dropping the player halfway down the previous division. (I.e., Masters → 50% of Diamond 1)
Similar to Ranked Arenas, rewards will be granted based on the highest RP threshold achieved.
MODIFIED: Tier Demotion Protection is available up to 3 games lost after promotion into a higher tier
NEW: Players can be demoted out of a tier halfway down to the previous division. (Masters → 50% of Diamond 1)
NEW: 100 RP Tier Promotion Bonus
Entry Cost Adjustments
Dev Notes: There are two types of players within a tier: those who can consistently gain RP and those who cannot. To smooth out this skill gap, we are adjusting entry costs across all divisions. Additionally, we are adding new entry cost breakpoints within the Master+ tiers to further filter for skill.
Modified: Entry cost increases on promotion into a new division
NEW: Masters+ entry costs further increase with total RP (5 RP every 1000 RP beyond Master Threshold up to 175 RP)
Kill RP
Dev Notes: We simplified and adjusted the Per Kill RP mechanics and are now directly presenting the base kill values by placements.
In a battle royale, placing worse than the bottom half of the lobby is losing. Placements and kills are both important metrics in Ranked. Having kills without the placement should not constitute a success. In response, we have pulled down Kill RP gains for placing worse than 10th. Players placed in this region are likely to lose RP.
At the same time, having good placements with little to no kills will cause players to miss out on a majority of their RP rewards coming from the previously mentioned Kill RP changes.
Kill Tier Differences
With the introduction of scaling entry costs and kill participations, we are softening the skill-based RP modifiers on kills.
Modified: Killing a lower-tier player grants slightly less reduced RP
Introductory Tier
Dev Notes: Bronze was the only tier without an entry cost. Any invested player would eventually climb out of it. So, we are introducing a new tier: Rookie. This tier will sit below Bronze to act as a proper one-time-only introductory tier to Ranked and will not have any Ranked rewards associated with it. Existing players are unaffected by the introduction of the Rookie Tier and can not be demoted into it, and likewise will not be reset into it on new splits or seasons.
NEW: Introductory ‘Rookie’ tier
MODIFIED: Bronze now has entry costs
RP Thresholds
Dev Notes: To account for the increased influx of RP, we are adjusting RP thresholds for each tier and division to keep the difficulty and effort to achieve them relatively the same.
Modified: RP thresholds for all tiers and division adjusted. The length of each division is increased by 200RP
3rd Party Kill Stealing Fix
Dev Notes: We have fixed a long-standing issue where kill credits were unintentionally transferred from eliminated teams. Previously, when Team A downs players from Team B, and Team A is subsequently eliminated, players from any team can misappropriate these downed players on Team B for kill credits by executing them, regardless of their involvement in the initial conflict. This issue has been fixed, and these kills are now properly voided. Kills are earned, not given.
Season 13 Ranked Maps
1st split: Storm Point
2nd split: World’s Edge
For Public matchmaking, World’s Edge, Storm Point, & Olympus will be available for players with the upcoming season 13 update.
Split Dates
1st Split will start on 10, 2022, with the revamped Storm Point map, although we don’t have the dates for the 2nd split as of writing.
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