Apex's biggest problems

Ever since launch there have been 3 major issues I have had with this game. 1 has been partially fixed, one looks like it may be getting fixed next week and im hoping Respawn will fix the third soon. Those 3 things being:

- Troublesome players, whether it be leaver, cheaters etc. (This is the one that has been partially fixed)

- Loot distribtution with particular attention to body shields (This may be getting fixed with the introduction of evo shields)

- Weapon balance (This is something I hope respawn stops ignoring, its a major problem with gameplay consistency)

Starting with Troublesome players. Since the introduction of the leaver penalty and ban waves on cheaters, for those that have been affected by them, this is the only 1 of my 3 issues that has improved in the year since launch. This is far from perfect though, there is much more that can be done to make this system better. First of all I want to request an actual in game report system. I dont know how it is on PC but on console when you want to report a player it doesnt go through official Origin/EA/Respawn services, you have to go through Xbox/PS report services. The issue being that these services provided by Microsoft and Sony dont actually work effectively because they have reports coming from a massive amount of people, from all different games, for loads of different reasons. Because of the shear amount of cases, the whole system has to be completely automated. Therefore most people get away with ruining games because the system never picks them up. An ingame report function would enable players to actually report players directly to EA's community management team and have a higher likelyhood of being seen by someone.

Second of all, I wish for the leaver penalty to be applied to all modes, unranked, ltm's, not just ranked. Obviously it can be less strict of a system than the ranked version but I believe that allowing people to leave unranked modes freely is just causing them to think leaving is an acceptable thing to do when they do eventually step into ranked, when it isnt. Also, I think it lessens the standard of unranked modes because people are just treating them like its all a joke, they can do as they wish and nothing matters. Which again is just breeding a bad attitude into the majority of players,

Moving on to loot distribution/ Since I am going to be talking about guns seperately, I only really have body shields to discuss. Straight to the point, REMOVE THEM. Body shields as they are right now are badly designed and implemented. It is allowing worse players to win fights based purely of RNG. If you put 2 players of equal skill against each other, the player with the higher body shield will win, thats a fact. They actively remove skill from the game as fights become more luck based than skill based which is the opposite of how it should be. If your team all drop and find white shields then on your way to the next loot zone encounter an enemy squad with blues/purple shields, you lose that fight its as simple as that. Body shields decide too many fights, which would be fine if they werent based off luck to get.

Now im hoping this issue is getting fixed next patch with the introduction of evo shields. If everyone starts the game with an evo shield already equipped and only through progressing further into the game does it get stronger, this is how body shields should work. Everyone starts on an even level, no one is dropping and immediately getting 200hp. Based off the trailer there are some improvments i would make though. Firstly it shouldnt upgrade with damage, thats just stupid imo, instead it should upgrade over time. Whether that be actually minutes, or rounds, or the best option imo being once a certain % of squads have died. 

20-16 squads remaining = White level 1 shield, +25hp, 125 max hp

15-11 squads remaining = Blue level 2 shield, +50hp, 150 max hp

10-6 squads remaining = Purple level 3 shield, +75hp, 175 max hp

5-3 squads remaining = Red level 4 shield, +100hp, 200 max hp

2 squads remaining = Gold level 5 shield +100hp and fast use, 200 max hp

This system ensures that all players at specific points in the game are all equal in terms of health pools, meaning that it becomes more about skill and hitting shots than random luck if you get a good body shield. Theoretically u could make people start at level 0 but i didnt want shield cells to be useless at the start and also it has the side effect of making it a little harder for you to be killed immediately as you drop, and discourages people just melee spamming. I chose to seperate squads 5-3 and top 2 with different shield levels so that you dont have 15 people running round with gold body shields and fast use. Seperating 5-3 to have red body shields, while only top 2 get gold just makes the end game more exciting for the final 2 squads while not making it too chaotic as would be the case if the last 5 squads all had gold body shields. 

Last point is weapon balance. Respawn have discussed their balance philosophy with weapons before, about how they like having weaker weapons that are good at the start of the game and you swap them out as you find better weapons. This philosophy is incredibly flawed for obvious reasons to anyone who regularly plays the game. This philosophy does not work with how apex plays. You cant have low, middle and high tier weapons unless the game itself is designed around that idea. If you want to have different tier weapons then THE ONLY WAY that works is if you a rollout system for weapons as the game progresses. Meaning at the start of the game ONLY low tier weapons are available and as the game continues the better guns start to spawn in, similar to how kraber/mastiff etc. are right now only spawning at the endgame. This ensures that everybody has access to the same level of weapons at the same times, unlike now where you can run around for 5 minutes and only find mozambiques and p2020's while enemy squads are stocked with PK's and R99's.

This is NOT a good idea though in my opinion, as it means players might never get to use certain weapons because they never get far enough in games. Also it makes games very repetitive because every game would start with the same weapons and get boring quickly. Ultimately, I think the devs need to change their balance philosophy and make all weapons, except the drop-pod weapons if they want, equally viable. Then it doesnt matter which gun you find, if they are all equally as strong as one another the game again comes down to skill rather than 'HAHA i found a PK while you got a mozambique, I WIN' . Obviously the guns will still all have different damage, fire rate, recoil etc.to make them feel unqiue from one another.