Apex Legends Ranked Explained

Apex Legends’ season 17 has completely changed the way ranked works in Apex Legends. Here’s a concise round-up of all the key points, biggest changes, and an overall explanation of the Apex Legends Ranked system.
Apex Legends Ranks
Let’s start with the easy part: all the ranks themselves still remain the same, from Rookie up to Predator, so your aim still is to get through those ranks by earning points. You’ll also be rewarded according to the highest rank you achieve in a season with things like dive trails, badges, and other stuff. However, the way the points system works, the way to get through those ranks, and even the way matches are made in ranked have all changed. Let’s get into the matchmaking changes.
MMR
Ranked matchmaking previously worked based on your RP and your current rank, favoring faster matchmaking times over lobby skill balance. From season 17 onwards, the matchmaking system now uses something called MMR, which stands for matchmaking rating. This rating will be used to create your matches and lobbies instead of RP, which has been replaced by LP (Ladder Points).
This matchmaking rating is hidden, so you won’t see a physical number pop up on your screen for your MMR, but it essentially works in the background to decide who’s in your matches and what kind players you face. It can be different from your current rank and points, but eventually the idea is that your MMR will level out with your current rank in terms of points.
Matchmaking and Gaining MMR
From a scoring perspective, MMR and Ladder Points (which replaces Ranked Points) are two separate numbers.
This new MMR system for matchmaking favors more evenly skilled lobbies over the previous ranked system. As a consequence of that, the devs did say the queue times might be slightly longer.
They also said that the Apex Legends MMR system is newly engineered for Battle Royale, so in general your MMR will rise when you’re doing well in placements. Things like eliminating other players and teams will also accelerate your MMR increase.

Queuing
The matchmaking system will try to match you with similarly built squads, like solos vs solos, duos vs duos, and trios vs trios. Pre-made teams in a game like Apex Legends do have a small competitive advantage over solo queue players, so to counter this, pre-made squads will have their MMR slightly adjusted upwards to account for this competitive advantage. That means that, as a pre-made squad, particularly a triple stack trio, you might find yourself being put up against slightly higher level solo players.
Ladder Points
Another big change was made to the way points work for you to rank up. There still is a point system for you to get through the ranks up to Predator, however, before season 17 it was all based on something called RP, which stood for Ranked Points. This has now been changed to LP, which stands for Ladder Points.
This new Ladder Point system gives you bonuses that will amplify your LP placement gains and mitigate your losses, while also focusing on the core goal of the Battle Royale, which is to be the last team standing.
This is done to ensure that placement isn’t the only thing that matters. If you’ve placed second but you only got one kill, you’ll earn less LP than someone who carried their team to third place by getting a ton of kills and assists.
There are three types of bonuses you can earn:
Elimination Bonuses
First are elimination bonuses, which are given to you or your team when you eliminate other enemy players. It’s individually calculated and multiple eliminations against the same players are discarded. This elimination bonus will include your personal individual kills, your personal assists, and kill participation.
The good news is here is that the devs have increased the assist timer from 15 seconds to 30 seconds, so it should be a lot easier to get assists from season 17 onwards.
Rating Bonuses
The second type of bonus you can get are rating bonuses. This is when your MMR greatly outperforms or exceeds your current ladder points. The idea of this bonus is to help you catch up to where you should be (in terms of your rank versus your MMR) a lot faster.
Skill Bonuses
The final type of bonus you can get are skill bonuses. These are given when your team interacts with a stronger opponent or performs well in an unfavorable match, such as when you’re a solo against trios or your opponents are a much higher MMR than you.
There are also lots of new hidden elements as part of the bonuses. The system will actually intelligently reward you these bonuses based on the difficulty of your match and your pre-made squad size, and that does mean you’ll see some variation in the way you’re awarded bonus points.
Calculating Ladder Points
The most you’ll lose is 50 Ladder Points, regardless of your rank, and that’s for 14th to 20th place finishes. If you finish 11th to 13th place, you will still lose 30 Points, but when you start getting to the top 10, you start breaking even. There is a progressive increase in the type of Ladder Points you get, and you can get up to 150 Ladder Points for a first place finish.
Once you add your bonuses to your placement score, you will get your total score per game and be rewarded with Ladder Points, which will help you get through the ranks. Note that once you get to Diamond or above, you get punished more harshly for bad placements.
See the table below (source: Apex Legends Resurrection Patch Notes) to see the points you can earn per placement.
Placement | S17 | S18 | S18 Diamond+ |
1 | 200 | 150 | 150 |
2 | 175 | 100 | 100 |
3 | 150 | 85 | 85 |
4 | 125 | 70 | 70 |
5 | 100 | 55 | 55 |
6 | 80 | 40 | 40 |
7 | 60 | 25 | 25 |
8 | 40 | 10 | 10 |
9 | 24 | 0 | 0 |
10 | 20 | 0 | 0 |
11 | -25 | -30 | -45 |
12 | -25 | -30 | -45 |
13 | -25 | -30 | -45 |
14 | -35 | -50 | -75 |
15 | -35 | -50 | -75 |
16 | -35 | -50 | -75 |
17 | -35 | -50 | -75 |
18 | -35 | -50 | -75 |
19 | -35 | -50 | -75 |
20 | -35 | -50 | -75 |
Placement Matches
The final thing you need to know is that there are no more mid-season resets. Instead, you’ll be reset at the start of every season, and you’ll have to complete 10 placement matches. Those 10 placement matches should get you back to the rank you’re supposed to be at (roughly). During these 10 placement games, your bonuses are magnified, and you don’t lose any LP during those games. On top of that, the minimum level to play ranked has also been increased to level 50. It’s supposed to limit new smurf accounts and make it harder for a smurf account to be able to play ranked.
Conclusion – Apex Legends Ranked Explained
There have been many changes to the way Apex Legends Ranked works, but the changes that Respawn Entertainment has brought to the game should provide a fairer and more consistent ranking experience. Once you understand what they’re going for, the Apex Legends ranked system isn’t that hard to understand, so we hope you found this article useful.