Drop zones in rakned removed is the worst change

Dammit, people: with the jump master system, if you didn't have time to loot or couldn't control your own rate-of-engagement, then that was your own responsibility. Since about season two I never once dropped in a place where I couldn't loot as much as I wanted to without interruption, and I almost never engaged an enemy squad before I was ready OR after I was already bored. The more I hear people complain about how "random" and "unskillful" the old system was, the more I realize how I honed my play style to take advantage of people who weren't knowledgable enough or patient enough to manage their own risk. I know it pains you to hear it, but risk management is a skill. When preset drops take that skill out of the equation, the game becomes a lot more one-dimensional, more homogenized, and, imo, more boring.

Should we drop solo away from our teammates? I used to do that with the dropship system. I don't think that's great & probably not what the devs wanted either. 

If Apex Legends had a solo mode, no issue with the dropships.

If Apex had a solo Ranked mode players will still complain. It will basically be who's communicating vs who's not communicating. 

So the next complaint from solo players will be to separate lobbies based on who's using their mic and who's not. 

Personally, I would be interested in trying out a solo queue Ranked mode, but I don't think it will solve much. 

In regards to a solo only Ranked mode, this doesn't sound appealing. Movement legends vs Non movement legends creates an imbalance. Hard pass for me. 

10000000 percent agree eith the dropship revert

"Should we drop solo away from our teammates?"

That's the $64,000 question right there. If you're a true rank grinder the answer is always NO. But if the only thing of value this game can offer you is a ranking... with all the twisted psychology and arbitrary standards and flawed judgment that goes into a rank grind... then in my opinion you've already ruined your gaming experience. Why not ruin it some more and own the game instead of letting it own you?

Rant over.

The real answer to the question is, sometimes. If you're on World's Edge and your random jump master is a twelve year old kid who pings streamer building... are you honestly gonna look me in the eye and tell me that you're gonna follow him in because "teams have to stick together?" You already know it's a suicide run, and now you want to double down on his idiocy and get dead right along with him? Think about how ranked works in this game. You would actually be doing him and the squad a favor by dropping solo. Your chances of survival, with or without a teammate, go up if don't drop in that **bleep** hole. If you drop cool and loot for a while in a safe place then you have a chance to replicate his banner and respawn him. Not that it will do you any good. He's already shown you what he's capable of, and what he isn't capable of. But all these things buy you evo and time. And time buys you RP.

Now you're gonna tell me all about how you don't queue up in a shooter just to hide behind rocks. And I'm gonna tell you that that's the game. If you'd rather die in a hopeless early-match fight than patiently wait out the clock and the circle, then that's fine. But don't let's pretend that the game rewards that. It doesn't. And if you need gunplay so desperately that you're willing to die to get it, then you need an arena shooter with unlimited respawns. CoD. Halo. Counterstrike. Valorant. The list is endless. Just don't queue up into a battle royale thinking that it's going to be a safely-paced series of  winnable engagements, with no third partying, no strategizing, and no risk. That was last season. Now the adults are back in the room.

I actually agree with a lot of what you said, but I think my point is the devs can't have it both ways; maybe I will have to drop solo 50% of the time in my ranked matches & that will push the devs to rethink the dropship. Or maybe that's the happy medium, where teams can drop however they like.

One thing's for sure in my opinion, the POI drop end-games are way more fun for me & that would be my priority.

There are ways for them to get back proper end-games with the dropship but that seems a long way away as well.

"One thing's for sure in my opinion, the POI drop end-games are way more fun for me & that would be my priority."

Now that's something I never thought about. How are they more fun? Why are they more fun? How is a POI drop endgame typically different than a jump master endgame?

More teams are alive during the endgame with dropzones. 

Recon... have you not been reading other players post now and in the past about this topic?

How are you so knowledgeable and unknowledgeable at the same time?

I have read that. But I like to hear if someone else has anything different to say or more to add.

My own experience, both ranked and unranked, is that some matches are down to five squads at first circle, and others are the aforementioned ten squads at the endgame. I never found any real correlation between any particular such outcome and the overall skill of the lobby. Except in the sense that rampant hot dropping does not seem skillful to me. But it's entirely possible that the fifteen squads who died on drop put up one hell of a fight. I wouldn't know because I wasn't one of them and I didn't end any of them. And I've heard opinions both ways on whether a final circle is more fun with ten squads or with just two. I have my own opinion, but not sure it matters for the sake of this discussion. People are allowed to like it better either way. And also, not sure that more squads at the end is a sign of higher skill or more ratting. And I don't use the term "ratting" in a derogatory way. It's a strategy. And if the season rewards placement over kills then it's a smart strategy.

But there is also an implication that what is more fun is also a better test of skill? Or am I reading something into that that isn't really there? Because on that point, if the implication is true, I would have to disagree. I know people want to have fun AND be proven skillful, but the two don't always go hand in hand. I also think people often associate fun with teammates who play like they do (not a given in this game), with engagements that happen one after the other and not all at once (also not a given), and maybe even with gameplay that tests their mechanical skills and maybe doesn't test their strategizing, or at least not too strenuously. That, again, could be me making inferences that are not right. But that is how it looks to me. At any rate, the day we can get any three players to agree on what is fun in this game is the day I eat my hat.

I'm sure comp players consider an ALGS based Ranked mode to be fun because they watch the ALGS.

I'm sure people who enjoy watching their favorite pro streamers/content creators would consider more teams during endgame funnier to watch. 

Where we differ Recon is that I care about Apex's viewership, which is currently being crushed by Overwatch. Both games released seasonal updates on the same day. I remember years ago when Overwatch players were begging their devs to follow Apex's blueprint. I just checked and Overwatch has 115K viewers compared to Apex's pathetic 20K. Overwatch supports their content creators, similar to Fortnite. Those games understand their gaming philosophy and identity. Apex devs are having a hard time because half of the community is advising them to make the game less competitive, and that's bad for business. This game has to attract and appeal to a competitive-minded fan base to increase viewership, player population, and longevity.

If the devs would rather listen to players who don't care about viewership and understand marketing then they're listening to the wrong people.