An Apex Legends dev has acknowledged the problems affecting Ranked in Season 13 and has confirmed the “team is actively working on improving it.”
Season 13 of Apex Legends introduced the Downed Beast POI on Storm Point, IMC Armories, and of course, the Heroic Defender Newcastle.
While all of these additions received an overwhelming amount of praise from the community, the Ranked Reloaded changes that reworked the competitive mode have been heavily criticized by players.
The primary complaint is that matches are often stale until the endgame and lobbies are regularly unbalanced with Diamonds, Masters, and even Predators being pit against lower-tier competitors.
Well, in a recent interview with The Loadout, a dev acknowledged the problems affecting Ranked and confirmed changes are in the works.
Apex dev confirms fix is coming for unbalanced Ranked matches
Speaking to The Loadout, Apex Legends Design Director Evan Nikolich spoke about the Ranked Reloaded patch, revealing what they thought the rework achieved, and what areas need improvements in the future.
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In terms of positives, Nikolich thinks the “degenerative strategies” that made it too easy to climb in Season 12 Ranked have been removed. However, they also acknowledged that there are too many “high-skilled players sitting in lower ranks for too long”, resulting in unbalanced matches for a lot of the community.
In response, Respawn will be looking at “separating out the skill tiers faster” which will in turn lead to more balanced matches between players of an equal skill level.
“We have improved over Season 12 where it was too easy to climb with degenerative strategies, but in Season 13 we have a number of high-skilled players sitting in lower ranks for too long…We need to get better at separating out the skill tiers faster, and the team is actively working on improving it.”
In terms of a timeline, Nikolich didn’t reveal when we could expect to see the changes the team is “actively working” on. However, as Ranked is such a huge part of the Apex experience, it’s possible the improvements could arrive in Season 14.
Either way, it’s great to see the devs have heard the community’s complaints and are working on improving the overall competitive experience.