With the launch of Apex Legends Season 8 next week, Respawn will be simultaneously launching the new season of Ranked play. Having assessed the results of Ranked Season 7, the developers have made a few changes, aiming to improve the overall quality of matches.
Apex Legends Ranked Season 8: What’s Changing?
“A consistent and on-going goal for the Apex Ranked team is to ensure competitive integrity through skill-based matchmaking,” explains Respawn; “For Season 8, we are taking a bigger swing at some of our goals, while taking into account a lot of feedback from the community.”
According to the studio, their top goals for Apex Legends Ranked Season 8 are to improve match quality overall and “create a healthier top end in Diamond+”. Overall, there are five main changes in the new season which aim to achieve these goals. The first is that players will now be able to earn RP rewards at placement 13, rather than at 10. This will allow players to earn RP slightly more easily than before. Furthermore, the kill/assist count has been raised to 6. As such, players will be able to earn more RP for their kills & assists in each match.
Another change tied to this area is that players will now be able to earn assists for up to 10 seconds after they deal damage to a target. Previously, this window was only 7.5 seconds. At the top end of the tier system, the Apex Predator rank will now include up to 750 players. This should improve queue times for players in the top bracket. Below Diamond rank, players should find that they matchmake with players of their own rank more frequently now.
Like previous seasons, Ranked Season 8 will feature a split halfway through, allowing for a soft reset of player ranks. The first half of the split will end on the 23rd of March. The first half of the season will feature the new Obliterated Kings Canyon. However, the Ranked map will shift to Olympus for the second half. World’s Edge won’t feature in Ranked play for the duration of Season 8. Instead, it will reportedly return in a future season.