Hero image: Apex Legends. Image: Respawn
Respawn has published a Ranked Roadmap for Apex Legends — a plan covering Seasons 31 and 32 — and it changes how bans, ranks, scoring and rewards work. The Steam post went up at 4:34am AEDT on Wednesday 21 October, by our conversion from 17:34 UTC on Tuesday.
Respawn says Season 31 starts in November and Season 32 in early 2027. It gives no exact dates, and it says this is not everything it has planned.
Season 31: bans and fairer entry costs
Diamond and above get Legend Banning. Each player picks one Legend to ban in a new pre-match phase, and each picked Legend shows a chance of being banned based on its votes.
The system then rolls those chances at random. Banned Legends cannot be chosen by anyone in that match. Respawn says it did not simply ban the most-voted Legends, because that “creates its own banning meta”.
Scoring also changes in lobbies with a wide spread of ranks. Each lobby gets a Lobby Tier, the median of all squads. A squad two or more tiers below it enters a Challenger match with lower entry costs, and one two or more tiers above enters a Goliath match with higher ones.
Respawn’s example is a Gold lobby, where Bronze squads are Challengers and a Diamond squad is a Goliath.
Road to Ranked challenges are removed. Access goes back to Account Level 20, and Respawn says its anti-cheat team is working on integrity concerns. Demotion Protection also gets a clearer display, and gives you three Demotion Shields when a single match could drop you a tier.
Season 32: a new ladder
Rookie is replaced by Iron. Emerald is new, with four Divisions between Platinum and Diamond. Grandmaster sits above Masters, and a Predator badge needs a top 750 finish in Grandmaster at the end of the season.
The ranks split into two leagues, with Emerald as the threshold between them. Open League matches all start in the Dropship. The Pro-Am League is Diamond, Masters and Grandmaster, and that is where Drop Zone deployment and Legend Banning live.
Scoring is the other big change. Respawn says “each kill will be worth a set amount of RP, and each placement is worth a set amount of RP.” Open League weighs kills slightly higher, and Pro-Am weighs placement higher.
You also get full kill RP for every kill your team gets. Assists and participations are removed. Entry costs rise by Division rather than by tier.
Weekly Ladders end in Season 32. Rewards get a preview only: new seasonal Auras, Ranked Dive Trails, Epic and Legendary Apex Packs, and rewards on promotion rather than at season’s end.
What it signals
We covered Respawn’s queue-time test earlier this month. This post sets out the plans for the next two seasons in one place, and Respawn says more detail will come before each season starts.
Steam lists Apex Legends as free to play, from Respawn and Electronic Arts. On 21 October it ranked sixth on Steam’s most-played chart, up from seventh last week.
Source: Respawn (Steam) – Apex Legends: Ranked Roadmap, Steam – Apex Legends, Steam – most-played chart