Why Is Apex So Hard

Apex Legends ranked changes feel awful in lower ranks

Apex Legend's Revenant standing over someone with their hand up

(Paradigm credit: Respawn Entertainment)

Apex has always sabbatum nicely in my gaming diet every bit a secondary live-service game that I can play with friends. Information technology'south simply been my 'main' game a couple of times, but information technology largely sits every bit the game I boot up to play a few days a week, interim every bit a support for whatsoever else I'm currently sucked into. It was a nice system.

I really loved playing ranked in Apex Legends, also. As a player of Valorant and Overwatch, having a central number go up or down is a great motivator to play more and improve. That's why I was excited to leap into Flavor 13 this week and start seeing what was new.

Notwithstanding, what I was met with was a brutal experience of mismatched squads and scant rewards. Come across, Respawn has decided to rework ranked, a great decision as information technology hadn't seen much alter since Season 2 when it debuted. However, some of the choices they've made, while non atrocious on their own, compound into a dreary feel.

Information technology's important to notation, I understand the logic of these changes. In a blog mail (opens in new tab) going over the ranked rework, Respawn explained pretty plainly: "In a battle royale, placing worse than the bottom half of the entrance hall is losing." It's a clear and understandable position. To support this, they've reduced the value of kills in the early on game. This is to discourage you from dropping in a decorated area, killing a agglomeration of people, but then burning out fast. Instead, Respawn says, "Survival is the primary objective." Again, a perfectly reasonable thought on paper, as it encourages you to try to get into the concluding squads and prioritise teamwork above all else.

In do, information technology'due south very harsh and tin can make practiced plays feel unrewarded. For an in-match instance, a friend and I dropped nearly some other squad. I went downwardly merely she cleaned upwardly and secured three kills, wiping out the other team. However, as often happens in Apex, a third party came over and took u.s. out as we were getting dorsum on our feet. She lost rank on that game despite having multiple kills, in a situation where it felt similar we never actually had a chance.

With third-partying so frequent in Apex, these harsh kill penalties leave y'all feeling like y'all are walking away empty-handed. Promoting squad-play is a great design goal, but information technology'due south also at odds with a huge number of solo players, who tin't, or prefer not to, utilize active voice conversation.

Bronze's upshot horizon

Adding to this, the Statuary tier now has a cost to play. Ranked has always had a system where you'd win 'RP' for expert placement and kills, earlier facing rising negative RP costs as you advance through the competitive tiers. Withal, Bronze was always free, and acted as a nice introduction to the Ranked season. A place to get your feet underneath you and allow you to outset building to your ceiling. At present, it feels similar a struggle to rise out of the game's lowest tier thank you to the RP reward changes.

Being in Statuary never feels good, and other than the new Rookie tier for burgeoning players, information technology's the everyman you tin can rank in the game. I'grand not an amazing Apex player, but I am decent, and losing RP despite getting kills in the early game at lower tiers merely feels bad.

This is complicated farther by in that location being a hard stop to how low your rank can drop. In Overwatch, y'all can freefall forever until you find players on your level. Apex has a floor though, and it's pushing so many players of varying skill levels to the bottom of the pile. That'south creating an atrocious vacuum at the lower tiers of the ranked experience.

Compounding this further, players that were in higher tiers in previous splits take been pushed down into Bronze with the refresh of the season. In every game, at that place are squads who should be in higher tiers, just rolling lower-level players. If yous happened to state near them, it doesn't matter if you take a few kills, you're non going to exist making very many gains. This will ease with time, but right now, information technology just feels bad.

Low-tier issues

Now, once again, these changes all make sense, and I doubtable they experience excellent for those at the superlative end of the skill table. For players who grind the game day after twenty-four hour period, who have been wanting teams to play smarter and with more considered strategies, this is a dream come up true.

That said, at the bottom of the pile, it feels like trying to go out of a black hole's event horizon. Noon has had a consistent identify on my schedule since it launched. You could log on, play some ranked, and mostly, you'd take a feeling of progress or forward momentum at the end of the night. Now though, Apex feels like information technology's lost a sense of attainability for a player who plays a couple of days a week.

Of form, Apex has an unranked fashion, and the moment to moment of the game is great equally ever. However, as a numbers-motivated histrion, it's difficult for that to remain compelling with no sense of progression. At that place was a ranked experience for players not mainlining Apex all day, simply that feels like it evaporated overnight. From give-and-take of mouth, information technology seems those on the pinnacle of the skill tree are having a keen time and that feel should definitely be preserved. Withal, as a player in the lower ranks, it's a demoralizing system that is killing my passion for a game I've spent and so long in.

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Patrick Dane is TechRadar Gaming's Guides Editor. With nigh a decade in the games press, he's been a consistent voice in the manufacture. He'due south written for a plethora of major publications and travelled the globe doing it. He also has a deep passion for games as a service and their potential to tell evolving stories. To wit, he has over 2000 hours in Destiny ii, over 1000 in Overwatch and is now deeply into Valorant.