Thoughtful reply much appreciated.
And let me start by saying that I drone on here for quite a while, and not entirely clearly or coherently. So feel free to skip this and ignore me. I was mostly just trying to work out my own thoughts on the matter and you are under no obligation to go along for the ride.
I belong to the school of thought that says pubs vs. ranked is an illusion. (Yeah, I know I lost a lot of people right there....) They're the same game and I play them exactly the same way. I don't like it when the dev slowly starts to "evolve" ranked game play. I've been in games before that did this and it just exacerbates the "us vs. them" mentality of the perennial casual/competitive divide. Which is more in peoples' heads, imo, than anything else. Honestly, who isn't competitive in this game? No one signs onto a first person shooter because they don't like competition. In a broad sense, obviously. But the point is still the point.
"Obviously there are higher stakes at play [in ranked], such as skill or player progression"
And that's the illusion I'm talking about. Skill is skill, no matter which mode you're in, and seeking to improve is something we're all doing either way because, again, no one picks up a competitive shooter to try and get worse. And progression is an even bigger illusion. The dev, using their own set of criteria, judge your performance and assign you a number. The criteria are arbitrary and change from season to season, so many players end up feeling like they're chasing a moving target. Best example of this is the age-old "placement vs. kills" dilemma, but there are others. And in the end most players end up treating ranked play as a ladder to be climbed instead of as a description of where you are as a player compared to other players. And they end up using that "information" to try to modify their behaviors. Sometimes successfully, sometimes less so, sometimes completely misunderstanding which behaviors are in need of modification. But always, ALWAYS assuming that the pros and streamers and developer are valuing the "right" behaviors, the "best" behaviors, and in the process creating a "one size fits all" mentality of how to play the game. And the more they set it in stone and the more players buy into it, then the less tolerant they become of anyone who questions those standards or looks for their own way forward.
This is one reason why I think fixed drops are a bad idea. They force a player to adopt the conventional wisdom instead of inviting him to decide for himself whether it's wise at all. Often it isnt. Or rather, it is... for a certain type of player, for a more aggressive player. Who wants teammates that match his aggression. Removing latitude for an individual to decide for himself how hot or cool to play a given situation. Or the match as a whole. Or the game in general.
Sorry, that went on longer than I expected. My hat's off to you if you stuck it out for the whole thing.
"My reasoning is solely based on the fact that I have team mates therefore it is a team based game."
This is absolutely completely and irrefutably true. And yet... you bring up the single biggest issue that I've heard pro-preset drops people talk about: solo queueing. An argument could be made, despite what I just said, that this is really only a team based game if you know your teammates, communicate with your teammates, and gel with your teammates. Otherwise it's a free for all. And yes, that can apply to ranked as well. I'm not saying that mindset will get anyone very far up the ladder, but it's still a mindset that people come by legitimately. The player can ask himself not "how far can I go up the ladder if I do everything exactly the way I'm supposed to do it according to pros and devs?" but instead "how far can I go using my own best judgment and exercising my independence to that end?" Obviously the answer to the second question is "not as far as if you answered the first question." But which route might be more satisfying to the player? I guess that depends on just how independent-minded they are, on how much they trust their own judgment, on whether they consistently have their own judgment proved right on the battlefield. Because in the end, rank is just a number, and whatever number you get will still be a lot lower than a lot of other players. So, says me, stop letting other players tell you how to do it and start figuring it out for yourself. It's entirely possible that mindset will lead someone to be a better team player. It's entirely possible that it won't. But it should be the player's own personal journey, not a cookie-cutter "Apex for Dummies" approach. To put it another way: I'd rather lose on my own terms than... lose on someone else's. Assuming, as we all should, that in battle royale you are almost always going to lose.
In the end it isn't just that I think it's unfair to expect outliers to constantly conform to the mainstream. I think it's unrealistic. I think the mainstream is too often wrong to expect anyone to follow them. Preset drops can bend the curve a little, but you can't engineer individuality or free will out of the game. I don't think it's possible. But I could be wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time if I was.
