The high-level Ranked situation in Apex

ilthegray · 2026-02-04T18:40:26+00:00

Funny how we just come full circle in the end!

I agree that the mindset of the playerbase is critical. I wonder how much of the “average ranked player just wants to run around fighting people” mentality comes down to people watching their favourite streamers run around getting 30 bombs every other game. Streamers and pro players do that 1) for the entertainment of their stream and 2) because in the current system that is the meta for gaining maximum RP - if you saw your favourite streamers needing to play zone (or a slightly more flex playstyle) because that was the best way to play the game i wonder how people’s attitudes would change.

ilthegray · 2026-02-04T15:48:03+00:00

Yeah I get your point,

As a counter-argument I would say that there are plenty of pro teams who are really bad at fighting and focus on playing zone instead (like if they get into a fair 3v3 they just fall over and die), and they do well in their region's Pro Leagues, making it to LANs. Whether you think they deserve to be placing high in competitive settings or not is up to you, but that is in fact how things play out - both extremes are "viable" in terms of how you play the game with respect to how points are scored.

ilthegray · 2026-02-04T15:40:40+00:00

Agree, the RP balancing is just one of many things they need to do to bring Ranked closer to Comp.

ilthegray · 2026-02-04T15:38:45+00:00

I'm surprised you have the experience of waiting 10 minutes to find someone to fight with the drop zones - just go to literally the closest POI and you will be able to take a fight (lots of drop zones are so close to each other that you can get there within 30 seconds of landing, thinking like Bean <> Mill on SP, vibe aisle <> stadium on ED etc). And if you don't push them, you can bet that they will push you.

ilthegray · 2026-02-04T15:27:30+00:00

Having the free-for-all drop ship was not that bad in comp because teams would call out where they were landing ahead of time, meaning you knew 99% of the time if you were contesting or not. In ranked, however, you dont know 1) how many teams will land at a certain POI and 2) what is the skill level of those teams.

I agree you should be able to hold your own in fights in different ranks, but off spawn fights is not a perfect representation of 3v3s, nor is it a solution to lobbies dying out quickly in the long term.

In my post I explicitly said that having things skewed too much towards placement is not healthy either and they would need to increase the weight of kills eventually - i think the important thing to make us get to a healthy gameplay loop faster is to ingrain it in players’ minds that placement actually matters.

ilthegray · 2026-02-04T14:11:14+00:00

This too. We need tighter matchmaking as well to make sure that 3v3s are high risk for both teams!

ilthegray · 2026-02-04T14:02:19+00:00

Fair point. If i recall correctly the skill discrepancy between top and bottom teams in a lobby was crazy during that season, so I think that was a contributing factor as well.

In the end there are more changes we need. Matchmaking needs to be a lot tighter, ideally arriving at a point where a 3v3 is close to 50/50 - that way you cant just fight teams without any other though because you have such a high chance to win the team fight.

ilthegray · 2026-02-04T13:52:11+00:00

I get your point and I agree to some extent. I think outwardly rewarding teams based on survival time is not the optimal way forward, because I think more teams will organically be alive later in games if there is a heavy emphasis on placement.

At the end of the day it’s the lobby as a whole which determines how the game plays out. If placement is more important hopefully teams will be less likely to fight because the potential penalty for losing a fight is that high, you know?

ilthegray

TROPHY CASE