Respawn has finally made it official: The next Apex Legends character is the stylish hacker Crypto. An Apex Legends Season 3 primer says the new fighter is "calm, cool, collected," and uses specialized surveillance drones "to stay in the fight and out of the spotlight."
It's nice to finally have Crypto confirmed, although the Season 3 update is very thin overall. The new season, called Meltdown, will arrive on October 1 with a new Battle Pass with more than 100 items to earn including Legendary skins, Apex packs, and other "new Battle Pass Content." The Charge Rifle, which leaked out of a Gamestop conference last month, is also confirmed to be coming, and a new Ranked Series will also begin on October 1.
That's about it for the new season, but there are details on Ranked Series 2. "We launched Ranked Leagues with a score-based system rather than a hidden ELO-type system. So far, we’re pleased with the results," Respawn said. "The system was easily understood by new and veteran players alike, and gave us a good baseline calibration of skill for future Series."
Rank distribution among players with more than five hours of Ranked playtime breaks down like this:
- 5.1% Bronze
- 40.0% Silver
- 35.7% Gold
- 16.8% Platinum
- 2.1% Diamond
- 0.2% Apex Predator
Respawn described that breakdown as "a pretty solid distribution for a system with no demotion," and said it will be used as the skill calibration for the second season. Tiers and divisions won't be changed, and the level requirement for ranked play will also stay the same. All players will be "soft reset" by 1.5 tiers when the new season begins—Gold 2 players will drop to Silver 4, Apex Predators will go to Platinum 2, etc.—so players will be able to climb back to their proper skill levels fairly quickly, and have more time to advance even higher on the ladder.
Scoring is being increased by a factor of ten to give Respawn more "granularity" in the point spread, and assists will count toward scoring. "Leaver penalties" will be enabled at the start of Ranked Series 2—they were disabled for the first series, as Respawn wanted "to be overly cautious on false positives"—and the Loss Forgiveness system is working well and will be maintained.
Match entry RP costs will also be tweaked:
- Bronze matches are still free
- Silver matches cost 12RP
- Gold matches cost 24RP
- Platinum matches cost 36RP
- Diamond matches cost 48RP
- Apex Predator matches cost 60RP
"Overall, we’re really happy with how the introduction of Ranked Leagues has worked out, and we’re excited for what we can learn and adjust as this second wave gets out to players," Respawn said. Full details on Apex Legends Ranked Series 2 are up at ea.com.
