Apex Legends Season 18 Ranked Changes Revealed

Apex Legends Season 18 Ranked changes were unveiled July 19 including updates to the Ladder Points system and additional tunings.

The Arsenal Ranked update was a major change to Apex Legends' competitive environment. "The team rolled out a series of changes that were intended to create consistently competitive matches by adjusting the scoring system to focus on playing the Battle Royale and as a team. Now that players have had a solid amount of time playing the Arsenal update, we’ve been able to analyze the data behind-the-scenes," Respawn said in the latest Ranked dev blog.

Apex Legends Season 18 Ranked Changes Revealed

Respawn provided a TLDR hitting on the highlights of upcoming changes listed below:

• Overly Generous Ladder Points (LP): Arsenal’s LP tuning was intended to be generous, but not this generous. Its current tuning is causing a series of cascading issues with the rest of the Ranked system. We are tightening the amount of LP awarded and bonuses included for Season 18.
• Bugs: We love to hate them. They are contributing to the tuning problem and we’re feeling confident about our upcoming fixes. 
• Future Changes: Season 18 will focus on refining Ranked tuning and stability. We’re going to take a deep breath and take the time needed to prepare for an even tighter and more competitive Ranked system.

The focus with lowering LP distributed is to balance out player distribution in ranks. Here's a bulleted list from Respawn for Season 18 and beyond as well in terms of Ranked updates:

• Decreasing overall LP gains per match to combat the overall shift in the rank distribution.
• Adding a ruleset that only applies to Diamond+ to properly dial in the top of the ladder. Players in these ranked tiers will have increased stakes and losses, and decreased rating bonuses and loss mitigations. Be ready to put it all on the line.
• Adding a minimum elimination bonus increase based on the player's MMR and buffing elimination bonus in general. Eliminations should always be a contributor to your rank.
• Increasing action in the ring by adjusting ring damage.
• Adjusting ring timings to create more mid-game encounters and less pre-finale lulls.
• Updating matchmaking to better handle players that are actively challenging their MMR, for more competitively challenging matches that mirror their ranking.

You can read more on the update here.