Announcing Ranked Arenas

Hello Legends! We’re back again to talk about the introduction of Ranked Arenas. The Ranked system in Arenas is completely separate from Ranked BR and features some important design differences, so today we want to talk through those in detail. Let’s get into it.

Fundamentally, we want Ranked Arenas to offer competitive, evenly-matched games, while also offering a satisfying ladder for players to climb.

Like a lot of other competitive games out there, Ranked Arenas features two separate measures of your skill: 

1. Your rank, which is your visible skill rating (e.g. Bronze, Silver, Gold, all the way up to Predator, just like the BR ranking system). 
2. An underlying MMR (matchmaking rating) score, a number which is invisible to everyone, including you. This is the number we use to determine who you should be matched against in Ranked Arenas. 

If you’re new to a system like this, it might not be obvious why we wouldn’t always keep these numbers the same. You might ask: Shouldn’t a Silver player always have the same MMR as other Silver players? 

In theory, yes, which is why for the most part your rank and your MMR will stay closely tied. But keeping the two scores separate comes with some major benefits, the biggest being that we can quickly adjust your MMR up or down based on your performance, without making you lose your rank just because of a few bad matches. Those quick adjustments means that matchmaking quality (the odds of you being paired against someone of similar skill) goes up. 

So, as an example: If you find yourself ranked Silver, but you’ve been consistently playing at a Platinum level, our system will go ahead and start matching you against other players with Platinum-level MMRs. If you win these matches, you’ll get a lot more Arenas Points (AP), which will make your visible rank catch up to Platinum quicker. If you lose these matches, likewise, you’ll lose fewer AP, and your MMR will invisibly drop until you’re matched more evenly.

When you first play Ranked Arenas, you start in placement matches. Your performance over these 10 matches will determine your initial MMR and your starting rank. MMR variance is wider initially, so these first 10 matches might be stomp-or-get-stomped until your MMR settles more.

Arenas is a heads-to-head fight between two teams, so awarding ranked Arenas Points is more cut and dry than in the 20 team Battle Royale. This means there is no entry cost and no AP for kills. Everything comes down to getting the win.

Once your placement matches are completed, you will be placed in your starting rank. From there, you’ll get more AP for wins than you lose for losses. The amount of bonus AP you get for wins will start to shrink as your rank converges with your MMR. This means that by the end of the season, your rank will be a more accurate measure of your skill and represent where you actually rank in relation to everyone else playing that season.

This also means that in Ranked Arenas there’s no demotion protection—you can demote a ranked tier, going from Plat IV to Gold I after a loss, for example. Don’t worry though, you will still get rewards at the end of the season based on your highest tier reached. These rewards are separate from the rewards you get for your placement in Ranked Battle Royale.

Unlike in Ranked Battle Royale, there will not be a Ranked Arenas split halfway through the season. Instead, you can work on your Arenas rank all season. We’ll consider introducing Ranked Arenas splits in future seasons. At the end of this season, you’ll get your rewards and your rank will reset before the next season begins, where you’ll start off again in placement matches.

Similar to Ranked BR, we want to maintain competitive integrity in Ranked Arenas. Players that abandon a Ranked Arenas match will be hit with a temporary matchmaking ban and will be unable to queue for Ranked Arenas until the ban is over. Along with this, if you have a teammate that abandons you, you will receive loss forgiveness for that match. With loss forgiveness, you won’t lose any AP and at worst will earn 0 AP for that match.

The same party rank restrictions for Ranked BR will also be in effect for Ranked Arenas.  Starting at Platinum, you won’t be able to queue for Ranked Arenas with party members more than 1 tier away. This means that Platinum players can queue with Gold but not with Silver party members. Gold players can still queue with their Bronze friends. Matchmaking will take into account whether or not you’re partied and always try to match your team to a similarly-skilled team.

Ranked Arenas will share the same overall map schedule as unranked Arenas. Party Crasher, Phase Runner, and Overflow will be in rotation along with one BR location that changes every two weeks. The Emergence update has three new BR locations that will replace the ones from Apex Legends: Legacy. These will once again be one location from each BR map.

• King’s Canyon - Hillside
• World’s Edge - Dome
• Olympus - Oasis

Maps in Ranked Arenas will change once an hour, while unranked Arenas will continue to rotate every 15 minutes.

That’s about it for Ranked Arenas! But before we go, let’s share some quick details about Ranked Battle Royale.

Although there are no major changes this season, we can reveal the ranked maps and split dates for this season:

World’s Edge is back for the first split which is currently scheduled to begin August 3, 2021 and ends September 21, 2021. The second split takes us to Kings Canyon, where the remainder of the season will play out.

The above image shows the badges you’ll get depending on the highest rank you achieved. For those Diamond-ranked and up, you’ll also get a nifty dive trail once the Emergence update drops. As in Battle Royale, in Ranked Arenas you'll have to finish the season in the top 750 to earn Predator rewards.

That’s all for now. See you next time, Legends.

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