Apex Legends Season 8 makes major Ranked play changes

Respawn Entertainment have outlined some major changes and improvements to Ranked play in Season 8, which include increasing the Predator Rank to 750 players, and bringing Skydive trails back.

The developers say that in Season 7, Ranked play had a higher player count and more playtime than in previous seasons, a positive indicator of growth for the more competitive side to Apex Legends.

But, there is still a lot of feedback to be taken on board by the devs, who said as far back as Season 6 that they had lots of changes planned for the system.

Those changes took some time to implement though, and didn’t come in Season 7 either. Now, in time for Season 8 starting on February 2, Respawn have unveiled their all-new ranked system.

First, Respawn shared the results of Season 7 Ranked, with Season 6 break down given in brackets.

• 16.35% Bronze (17.76%)
• 23.86% Silver (26.23%)
• 32.09% Gold (36.25%)
• 23.13% Platinum (17.75%)
• 4.37% Diamond (1.89%)
• 0.20% Master & Apex Predator (0.12%)

Apex Legends Season 8 Ranked play changes

Respawn say they have two main goals with the changes to Ranked in Season 8 and beyond. The first is to “Create a healthier top end in Diamond+”, and the second to improve match quality, which includes filling most, if not all, of the players in your lobby with players of the same rank.

• Earn placement RP earlier in a match
  • RP rewards begin at placement 13 instead of 10 in a match.
• Kill/Assist count has been raised to 6
  • Earn RP for more of your kills and assists in a given match.
  • This is a slight nudge to give really good players a slightly faster trip back to their competitive rank, while giving our top tier players more ways to pull ahead of the pack in the Predator ranks.
• Assist Threshold Increased to 10 seconds
  • Earn assists for up to 10 seconds (up from 7.5 seconds) after dealing damage to a target that is killed by someone else.
• Predator has been increased to the top 750 players
  • Allowing more players to enter predator should improve queue times while remaining an exclusive tier for the highest levels of play.
• Matchmaking Tightening
  • Players below Diamond will matchmake much more often within their own Ranks.
• Skydive Trails return
  • In Season 8, Diamond Skydive Trails will be making a return as a ranked reward.

Season 8 Ranked play splits

The first split of Season 8 will take place on the new-look Kings Canyon, and will run until March 23.

• Read More: Apex Legends Season 8: Legends buffs, bug fixes

It will then be replaced by Olympus for the second split, while World’s Edge will not feature in Ranked play this season.

Season 7 Ranked rewards

And for those of you who grinded Ranked mode in Season 7, here’s what you can expect to pick up as rewards, depending on your rank.

Update: Respawn have said that they made a mistake, and that Diamond Skydive trails will only be available as Season 8 rewards – so next season, rather than Season 7. They have updated the image of the rewards, removing Diamond trails for Season 7:

Apex Legends Season 8 starts on February 2, on PS4/5, Xbox One and Series S/X, and PC on Origin and Steam.

We’re also expecting the Nintendo Switch version to release in time for Season 8.