After implementing a matchmaking change aimed at the highest levels of ranked play in Apex Legends, Respawn has taken to Twitter to explain a little more about the experiement. It describes the tweak as a "soft region lock" with the aim being to guarantee "competitive integrity" at higher ranks.

While Respawn has said that it's working on a number of changes to address cheating in ranked play, including "work to improve the netcode when you fight a player with a bad connection to the server," the main change players may have noticed is the soft region lock.

The region lock only affects players in Apex's two highest ranks, Masters and Predators, and works by automatically placing the party in "the lowest latency datacenter available to the party leader," rather than letting players choose their own server. The results of the initial testing show a much higher percentage of players being placed in their their local server.