Apex Legends: Here’s how Ranked Arenas will work with Season 10

Season 9 of Apex Legends introduced Arenas, an alternative mode to the battle royale game that focuses the action in a 3v3 combat setting. The mode has become quite popular and in Season 10, Respawn Entertainment will build upon it with Ranked support.

During EA Play Live this past week, Game Director Chad Grenier briefly talked about the future plans for Arenas within Apex Legends, promising new maps as well as other surprises that he wasn’t quite ready to talk about.

Of course, EA also previously confirmed that Emergence will introduced Ranked Arenas. Now that they’ve had a season to learn from, they are ready to finally kick it up a notch competitively.

Arenas will have a different ranked system than the one that’s used for Battle Royale. While we’re still using the tier system from Bronze all the way to Predator, Ranked Arena will have a separate underlying rating system specifically for matchmaking that won’t be visible to you or other players but will ultimately be tied to your ranking.

This hidden MMR (matchmaking rating) will be the number used to determined who you should be playing against in Ranked Arenas rather than your actual rank. So, for example, just because you are ranked Silver doesn’t mean you’ll only be matched up against other Silvers. It’s possible that your rank could differ from your teammates and opponents based on the MMR.

The benefit of using an MMR rating system is that developers 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.” So if you’ve been playing above your rank but have just really poor luck when it comes to squads, it should be reflected in your MMR although it won’t necessarily be visible on screen. You’ll probably notice it while playing, though.

Because your MMR is still tied to your visible rank, it will actually affect how quickly or slowly progress through your visible rankings. In other words, if you’re ranked Silver but your MMR suggests you’re playing at a Platinum level, you’ll be playing along with other high-skilled players. The benefit to this is that if you win, you’ll earn more Arena Points (AP) and rank up more quickly. On the flip side, if you lose, you’ll lose fewer AP and your MMR will be adjusted accordingly.

Your MMR for Ranked Arena are determined by your first 10 matches. Once completed, you’ll be placed in your starting rank and will gain more AP for wins than you lose for losses. This bonus AP will start to shrink as you play more matches and your rank converges with your MMR. The idea is that by the end of the season, your rank should be pretty accurate to your actual skill in relation to everyone else who played that season.

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Ranked Arena will also differ from ranked Battle Royale in that there will not be a mid-season split. This is something Respawn is still considering though. In the meantime, you’ll have all season to work on your Arenas rank before the reset at the start of next season.

As far as leavers, those who abandon a Ranked Arenas match could be hit with a temporary matchmaking ban. If that happens, they will be unable to queue until the ban is lifted. Additionally, those who get stuck with a leaver will have loss forgiveness for that match, so you won’t lose any AP.

And lastly, there are some party restrictions. Similar to Ranked Battle Royale, once you hit Platinum, you won’t be able to queue for Ranked Arena with anyone more than 1 tier away.

Apex Legends Season 10: Emergence is slated to go live on August 3. In addition to Ranked Arenas, we’re also getting an intriguing new legend in Seer, who could absolutely dominate Arenas with his abilities.