Apex Legends' design director on the health and direction of ranked - The Loadout

The Loadout speaks to Apex Legends' design director, Evan Nikolich, about the current state of ranked following Season 13's Ranked Reloaded update.

One of the biggest developments for Apex Legends Season 13 was Ranked Reloaded, a collection of changes and improvements to Apex’s competitive mode bundled up into one package.

The main focus was not only to create a more satisfying and less frustrating ranked experience, but one where the quality of the gameplay would also change to better reflect the placement-focused action we see in the Apex Legends Global Series.

While Apex Legends’ ranked mode is constantly tweaked every season, this marked one of the biggest single updates to ranked since the game launched?

For some, ranked is the best it has ever been, but Ranked Reloaded is still far from being universally loved by all competitive-minded Apex players.

With that in mind, we reached out to Respawn for its thoughts on the direction of ranked play, how Ranked Reloaded has been received, and what it’s looking to tinker with next.

Nikolich reflects on the changes that were made in Ranked Reloaded, and whether Respawn might look at addressing some of the other things the community has flagged recently, such as RP costs and Gold Knockdown Shields.

The Loadout: Ranked Reloaded brought about some significant changes to ranked play in Apex.

Based on community feedback and the data we’re seeing, there’s been the most positive improvement around rank placement and better team play.

We think this is a step in the right direction and we want our players to know that we will continue to iterate on the ranked experience so keep that feedback coming.

Usually, we get some details on both ranked splits at the start of a new season, yet we still don’t know what’s happening with Season 13 Split 2 at the moment.

With the emphasis on placements in Ranked Reloaded, some players have argued that gold Knockdown Shields should be removed as they are seen as a bit of a cheesy or overpowered strat for surviving the end-game.

A suggestion from former Apex pro Eric ‘Snip3down’ Wrona is that solo queue and duo queue players should get discounted RP entry costs, as three-stacks have more of an advantage in ranked.

When I play with a group of random people against a group of friends, my team does not start with a few point lead because that would be unfair.

We believe Ranked Apex should abide by the same philosophy – wins should be based on overall team skill.

We aspire that one day pro teams will be able to look for the next great player to join their team from the top Apex ranked players

In addition to ensuring that higher ranked games are competitive and where the best rise to the top with a path to pro-play, we also want people who aren’t Diamond to enjoy ranked games as well

We want ranked to feel impactful for players who are building their skills and for those players to get a sense of growth as they master skills and move up the ranks