An Apex Legends dev has responded to players asking for demotion to be added to Ranked and even explained the negative effects it could have on the mode.

A lot of pros and the community alike are not satisfied with the current state of Ranked in Apex Legends and are calling on Respawn to make some hefty changes to the mode.

The main suggestions from players have been the inclusion of an in-game leaderboard so it’s easy to track the top players, as well as more unique Ranked rewards.

However, the most requested feature by far has been the addition of demotion, forcing competitors to maintain their rank throughout a season.

Well, a dev has finally responded to the idea of demotion and is concerned it won’t be as impactful on the matchmaking as the community believes.

Apex Legends players call for demotion to be added to Ranked

Taking to Twitter on December 31, Ranked Game Designer Exgenier started a thread by pointing out that people “hate losing things about twice as much as gaining things.”

TIL about the actual term for this; Loss Aversion; People hate losing thing about twice as much as gaining things. Fun fact- People will behave irrationally, and to great lengths to prevent that loss…

— Aaron L (@Exgeniar) December 31, 2021

This sparked a lot of responses from Apex players who want demotion to be added to Ranked, arguing that competitors would try harder in their games if they were at risk of losing their position on the ladder.

Exgenier disagreed with this argument, tweeting that they think players would simply not play the mode if they were at risk of losing their rank.

Disagree. I assert they would just not play instead.

— Aaron L (@Exgeniar) January 2, 2022

Not only that, they argue that demotion wouldn’t improve the quality of players or behavior within Ranked games even if incentivized rewards were added to the mode.

This is because demoted players wouldn’t “really have to care about their rank because their primary goal of  ‘get reward from Diamond/Masters’ would have already been achieved”.

In a world with Demotions, demoted players don't really have to care about their "rank" because their primary goal of "Get reward from Diamond/Masters" would have already been achieved. This means demotion will still be ineffective. (2/x)

— Aaron L (@Exgeniar) January 2, 2022

It’s difficult to predict whether Respawn will add demotion to Ranked in the near future. Exgeniar certainly didn’t rule out implementing it into the game, they only argued that it wouldn’t improve player behavior in the mode and the quality of matches.

Either way, with so many pros calling for the feature to be added, we’ll have to wait and see what the devs have in store for the community in future updates.

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