Hello. You’ve asked for a feedback, so here’s mine.
I think the first penalty may do more harm than good if implemented. There are cases when dying early has nothing to do with reckless behavior. You can go to a free POI and start split looting, then 5 seconds later a late-dropping team that flew backwards lands on you and 3-v-1 you. You may be lagging (but not disconnected) and unwillingly land in an out-of-bound area. You may also accidentally jump of the map (sounds ridiculous, but I did that a couple of times in Overlook). Secondly, if hot dropping punishment becomes effective to the point of making everyone not wanting to contest, it will become very hard to find a free POI with decent loot, and you may get contests just because there’s nowhere else to land. We had “early contest protection” in the form of drop zones in seasons 26 & 27 and apparently it wasn’t a good experience for many lower rank players.
I’m equally concerned about penalizing for being too far from your team. The biggest problem here is that this system will make no distinction between cases when one player plays recklessly and when one reasonable player refuses to follow a reckless duo. In case of three solos you can get punished if you are the only person who tries to play sensibly and chooses to rotate around a big POI where 5 teams are fighting. In case of a duo plus solo, pair’s movement will be at the mercy of solo’s desires and, for example, the duo will get punished for refusing to hot drop with the solo.
Finally, great post and proposal breakdown. You made it very easy to grasp your suggestions and motivations behind them, which is very helpful for having a meaningful discussion.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I actually agree that there are edge cases that need to be accounted for, but I don't think those edge cases invalidate the basic idea. They are exactly the things the safeguards and further tuning would need to address.
For example, the “free POI and a late-dropping team lands on you” situation is a legitimate concern. That's why I proposed the Vicinity Audio Cue in the first place. The objective isn't to assume that every early death was intentional. It's to give players macro information that another team has entered the same landing area.
And Apex already has precedent for this. Diamond and above already uses Drop Zones and visual cues when another team trespasses into another team's designated drop zone. So giving players information that another squad has entered their landing area isn't a completely new concept. My proposal is essentially trying to provide a lower-rank version of that awareness through an audio system, with different logic for major POIs, isolated clusters and the train(if it still runs).
I also don't think the system should make contests disappear. Good teams should still be able to intentionally contest a POI. There's a huge difference between a coordinated 3v3 contest and a teammate opening one supply bin, grabbing one weapon, and immediately sprinting into three other teams.
That's the behaviour I'm targeting.
If everyone lands, takes a reasonable amount of time to get basic equipment—two weapons, ammo, cells, syringes, etc.—then realistically there shouldn't be a huge number of legitimate situations where someone is fully eliminated within the first 60 seconds. If you choose to immediately take an extremely low-loot fight, that's a decision.
And the consequences of that decision aren't limited to the person who died.
If you die 20 seconds into the match, your teammates now have to decide whether to leave you, craft you, or respawn you. Crafting and respawning aren't harmless activities. Teams actively look for crafters and players using respawn beacons. I've personally been killed several times because we were trying to recover an early-dead teammate.
A 3v3 fight is already difficult enough in Apex because of third parties and fourth parties. If one teammate has already thrown their life away, the remaining two are now potentially taking a 2v3, and even if you win that fight, another squad can arrive immediately afterward to wipe your team out.
So from my perspective, the early death is already carrying a team-wide consequence. The proposed penalty doesn't create that consequence—it simply adds an individual consequence on top of the normal Ranked entry cost for the person whose reckless behaviour caused it.
Everyone still loses their normal RP. The offender just loses more.
That's also why I don't think 2x or 2.5x is necessarily excessive. If somebody repeatedly loses 2x or eventually 2.5x RP because they're repeatedly making the same reckless decisions, that may actually be what finally breaks the habit. The objective isn't to punish somebody for one unlucky game; it's to make repeated reckless behaviour unattractive.
On the perimeter issue, I agree that the system needs to distinguish between “I am recklessly abandoning my team” and “my teammates are making a terrible decision and I'm trying to survive.”
That's why the proposal has several layers before the penalty happens: 150m distance, one-minute duration, HUD warning, voice warning, countdown, then actually being downed and killed while still outside the boundary.
I'd also be completely open to additional exceptions—for example, suspending the timer during active combat or when the player is clearly rotating toward zone rather than simply running away from the squad.
But I don't think the possibility of edge cases means we should have no individual accountability.
The fundamental problem still exists: Ranked is a team-based game, but solo-queue players have almost no control over the decisions their random teammates make.
If someone makes a reasonable decision and gets unlucky, they shouldn't be punished extra.
If someone deliberately hot-drops, grabs one weapon, immediately takes a fight, dies, gets respawned, and then repeats the same behaviour, I think there should be a meaningful personal consequence.
That's the distinction I'm trying to create with the proposal.
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