Coming February 4th is the fourth season of Apex Legends. This new season comes with a new weapon, new character, and more! A lot of information was provided during their reveal Devstream.

THE CHAMPION IS HERE
A charismatic Legend, new weapon, fresh Battle Pass, updates to Ranked, and much more await in Apex Legends Season 4 – Assimilation.

The new weapon is called “Sentinel” which is a bolt action sniper rifle that has a charge mechanic to allow for a faster shot with less power or a powerful shot with a long draw time. The new legend is named Forge. From the stream, the lore is that he had conquered the world of MMA as a five-time champion but now he wants in on Apex to prove his worth. There are also new battle pass items, a rework on Ranked that includes a Mastery tier.

Section from the official website:

Hey everyone! Apex Legends™ Ranked designers here and we’re back to talk about Ranked Leagues Series 3 for Apex Legends. We’ll revisit our goals, talk about some results, and detail how Ranked Leagues will work when Season 4 – Assimilation launches on February 4.

• Moving to Splits per season, ~6 weeks of ranked play before a reset
• Adding Master Tier, Apex Predator becomes top 500 players by platform.
• Soft reset and scoring are the same, but soft reset is every split.
• Dive trails will be moving to a seasonal reward model, but Series 1 & 2 players are grandfathered in

Series 2 Results

We want to quickly review our four goals for Ranked and comment a bit on some of the Series 2 results so far. We’ll keep improving the ranked system as we go!

• Create a True Measure of Skill in Apex LegendsAs of January 10, 2020 we have the following distribution among players who played more than 5 hours of Ranked (versus last Series):

• 3.9% Bronze (5.1%)
• 29.1% Silver (40%)
• 35.3% Gold (35.7%)
• 23.6% Platinum (16.8%)
• 7.1% Diamond (2.1%)
• 1.0% Apex Predator (0.2%)

This distribution shows it was a bit easier to reach Apex Predator this time, so we’ll be introducing Master Tier and reworking how the Apex Predator tier works. More details below.

• Reward competitive players for the time they invest in Apex Legends

We’ll be giving out gun charms, badges, and dive trails again based on the highest tier achieved this Ranked Series. However, from here onward, dive trails will be temporary for all future series. This is to help alleviate the visual space when everyone is dropping to the map, because as it stands now there would eventually be too many trails and they would lose their meaning. For example, if you place Apex Predator in Ranked Series 3, you will have the Apex Predator dive trail available for the duration of Series 4, then it will be removed. Players who earned any dive trail in Series 1 or 2 will be grandfathered in, and will keep the trails forever. We currently plan for a set of 4 dive trails that return in a cyclical fashion every year, so for example, players can get the chance to earn the same dive trails in Ranked Series 3 and in future Ranked Series 7 a year from now, while another set will be available to earn for Ranked Series 4 and Ranked Series 8, and so forth.  

• Ensure competitive integrity through skill-based matchmaking

Matchmaking based on RP continues to work well for ranked ladder climbing. We may revisit matchmaking in the future, but for now this is working as intended. 

• Let top-tier Apex Legends players compete at the highest levels of skill

We’re continuing to see the highest skill players reliably get to the top of the ladder given some time and with the addition of Master Tier, described below, we’ll have even more serious competition at the high end.

All in all, it seems like a major change is coming in Season Four and we are living for it!