Hero image: Apex Legends. Image: Respawn Entertainment / Electronic Arts
Respawn has laid out two seasons of Ranked changes, and Season 31 starts with Legend Banning. Season 32 then splits Ranked into an Open League and a Pro-Am League.
Respawn’s Ranked roadmap says Season 31 starts in November and brings Legend Banning to Diamond-plus matches. If you queue at that level, you will vote on a Legend to ban before you pick your own.
Here is how it works: each player in the lobby picks one Legend they would like banned, and the lobby then sees each chosen Legend’s chance of being banned, set by its share of the votes. The game picks bans at random from those chances, and nobody in the match can choose a banned Legend.
Respawn says it did not ban the most-voted Legends outright, because that “creates its own banning meta”.
Season 31 also changes what a match costs you. Each lobby gets a Lobby Tier, which is the median of all the squads in it. If your squad sits two or more Rank Tiers below it, you are in a Challenger match and pay less to enter. Two or more above, and you are in a Goliath match and pay more. The cost shows before the match starts.
Getting into Ranked gets easier too, because Respawn is removing the Road to Ranked challenges, so access moves back to Account Level 20. It adds that it will “continue to explore the specific level threshold”. Demotion Protection, which already exists, becomes visible. While it is active you get three Demotion Shields, and each one absorbs a demotion.
Season 32 arrives in early 2027 and is the big one. Iron replaces Rookie, and Emerald is new, sitting between Platinum and Diamond with four Divisions. Grandmaster goes above Masters, and Respawn says a Predator badge needs a place in the top 750 of Grandmaster at season’s end.
Open League covers Iron to Emerald, while Pro-Am League covers Diamond, Masters and Grandmaster, and that is where Drop Zone deployment and Legend Banning live.
Scoring is flattened, so each kill is worth a set amount of RP and so is each placement. You get full kill RP for every kill your team gets, which means assists and participations are removed. Entry costs rise at each division, not each tier. Open League weighs kills a little higher. Pro-Am League weighs placement higher. Weekly Ladders end with Season 32.
Respawn says the reward details come closer to launch. It lists new seasonal Auras and rewards on promotion among them.
This is not the whole plan. The post says there are “more changes to come”. We covered the Plat-plus queue test earlier this month. Respawn gives no Australian times or dates for either season.
Steam lists Apex Legends as free to play, from Respawn and Electronic Arts. When we read Steam’s most-played chart on 21 October, it ranked 6th, up from 7th the week before.
Source: Apex Legends (Steam) – Apex Legends: Ranked Roadmap, Steam – Apex Legends, Steam – most-played chart