Apex Legends Guide: Here's What To Expect In Ranked League For Series 2

By Jason Nieva @jnievaplayerone 09/19/19

Series 2 is almost here. Respawn Entertainment

Apex Legends announced that its Ranked League Series 2 begins October 1. Series 2 launches at the same time as Season 3. However, before all that arrives, Apex Legends is sharing details on how the Ranked Leagues are going to work moving forward. In this guide we look deeper into what you can expect for Series 2.

According to Apex Legends, there are four main goals when it comes to Ranked Leagues. These are:

True Measure of Skill
- When Respawn first launched Ranked Leagues, the decision was not to use a hidden ELO-type system, but instead go for a score-based system.
- This has resulted in a system that is not only easy to understand by both new players and veterans, but also serves as a good baseline calibration skill for future Series.
- As of September 10, the majority of players who played at least five hours of Ranked are either Silver or Gold.
Rewarding Players
- For competitive players, the best reward for ranked play is the actual rank itself. Apex Legends is also now going to offer cosmetic rewards to players based on their highest score ranked.
Ensuring Competitive Integrity
- Respawn has made sure that improvements done to matchmaking during Series 1 resulted in players getting into games faster and matched with those having similar skills. However, this became more difficult at the highest end of the skill spread.
- Respawn confirmed that they are continuing to look into this matter and will make adjustments as needed.
Top-Tier Players
- Ranked Leagues has resulted in what is clearly some of the most intense late game scenarios. In order to increase the intensity while encouraging more aggressive play, new changes are going to be made to the scoring system.

With that out of the way, we now look at what Series 2 can offer. Here are the things players can expect:

Staying the Same
- There are part of the system that had worked as planned and these will remain the same. This include the Tiers and Divisions. In addition, level requirement for ranked play stays at 10.
Soft Reset
- Once Series 2 begins, all players are going to experience a soft reset on their ranked position with the scoring system being updated as well.
- Reset is 1.5 Tiers down. What this means is that if a players ended Series 1 in Gold II, the reset puts them at Silver IV. If a player finished at Platinum IV, the reset gets them to Silver II.
- This change means that players need less time to reach their true skill ranking and have more time to compete at their actual skill level.
Scoring
- While the Scoring system did work well for Series 1, some improvements are still coming.
- The first goal is to a have some granularity in the point spread so Apex Legends is 10x'ing all points in the whole system.
- Though it may look like point inflation, it looks as if Respawn wants to reward something between 1 RP and 2 RP. Thus going for 10, 15, and even 20 RP allows the game to have some flexibility.
Entry RP Cost
- Ranked matches now need RP to play based on a player's tier:
  - Bronze matches are still free
  - Silver matches cost 12RP
  - Gold matches cost 24RP
  - Platinum matches cost 36RP
  - Diamond matches cost 48RP
  - Apex Predator matches cost 60RP
Kills, Assist, and Multipliers
- For Series 2 it looks like Apex Legends is going to add assist to the kill count score.
- In order to have the same "standard," so to speak, an Assist is going to be defined as dealing damage to an opponent within five seconds before the same opponent is knocked down. Should an enemy be revived, the assist credit is clear.
- Apex Legends also makes it clear that the Assist credit is going to be handed to the teammates of the player who gets the skills. What this means is that the same player cannot get a kill and an assist on a single opponent.
- While the combined kill and assist score is going to be capped at five per match, it is going to have a placement multiplier. There was some controversy when the skill cap was implemented but the reality was that not too many players hit that cap too often.
Ladder Position
- For Series 2, ranked players continue to see their standing worldwide. However, their RP is no longer shown.
- With this, Apex Legends hopes that it results in intense competition. In addition, ladder positions are split by platform. Thus three players can claim the top spot for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox One.
Rewards
- Once the new Series starts, players are going to receive cosmetic rewards based on their ranked performance. Players get notified when they log in that their rank has been reset and that they have earned cosmetics.
- All players also get a badge that displays the highest level they reached.
- Players ranked Platinum or higher get the exclusive gun charm for the highest level reached.
- Players ranked Diamond and Apex Predator receive a custom dive trail for the highest rank reached.
  - The dive trail can be enabled or disabled in the Loadouts section.
Penalties
- During Series 1, Apex Legends made sure deactivate leaver penalties to avoid false positives. However for Series 2, leaver penalties are now going to be enabled.
- Players that abandon their teammates are going to be handed a matchmaking penalty. This is applicable not only to Ranked matches but also to regular matches.
- So what penalties can players get? Well they get barred from joining a match based on the increasing amounts of time based on how often said players have abandoned Ranked.
  - Penalty times for example start at five minutes with repeat abandons increasing that time to a maximum of one week.
- To be clear, a player is said to have abandoned the game when the player leaves that game before the match is over. Examples include:
  - leaving during character select
  - leaving while still alive
  - leaving when dead despite having the chance to be respawned by teammates
Loss Forgiveness
- When Ranked was first introduced, Apex Legends introduced what is known as the Loss Forgiveness system which continues to work as expected.
- The system ensures that players do not get penalized RP when their teammates drop from the game or experience technical issues that are out of their control.