Leading up to Apex Legends’ newest season, Emergence, the developers showed off a new trailer and released information on the new legend and ranked updates coming August 3.
The trailer features some of the best visuals (and graphic matching cuts) seen in an Apex Legends launch trailer, and provides some hints as to what to expect from the game’s newest legend, Seer.
Hints, however, are not all there is to go off of, as Respawn unveiled Seer’s abilities at EA’s live press conference. Seer’s passive ability will act as a heartbeat sensor allowing him to sense enemies through walls while aiming down sights. His tactical will send out microdrones from his chest that reveal and track enemies’ locations. When Seer uses his ultimate, he creates a sphere around an area that reveals quickly moving enemies automatically as well as their footsteps.
The design of Seer’s abilities is meant to give “precise and lingering information” as opposed to Bloodhound’s more aggressive style, said Chad Grenier, Game Director of Apex Legends.
With the launch of Emergence comes the new Ranked Arenas mode, which operates slightly differently than Ranked Battle Royale mode. In Ranked Arenas, players will have a rank from Bronze all the way to Apex Predator, similar to Apex. However, players will also have an invisible MMR (matchmaking rating) score that helps to determine who they will be matched against. MMR will allow matchmaking to quickly adjust player skill level up or down to ensure they are being matched with similarly skilled players without being overly punished for losing a few bad matches.
Wins earn you ranks in Ranked Arenas, and your first 10 matches in the mode will determine both your MMR as well as your starting rank. Ranked Arenas will have no demotion protection, but the game will still award you for the highest tier you reach in a given season. This mode will have no ranked splits that restart mid-season, so players will have all season to work on their ranked position without worry of it resetting until the next season.
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.
In ranked battle royale news, World’s Edge returns for the first split up until September 21, 2021, when the second split will take players to Kings Canyon for the remainder of the season.
For more gaming news, stay tuned to Gaming Trend.
Noah Anzaldua is a game journalist, Twitch streamer, and a passionate fan of Apex Legends and Destiny 2. Writing and streaming are his passions, and he is carving a career path out for himself. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama where he is majored in News Media, History, and Political Science.
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