@MrGreenWithAGunTo explain things easier, I'm going to say it as a 10/10, (how many matches out of 10 matches)
Team work in pubs: 1/10
- Reasoning: 9/10 times, people are only focused on hot dropping, or doing their own thing. There's no reason to work as a team when dying means nothing other than lowering your K/D, (kills to death ratio). There's only been a small handful of times where teammates bothered to work with me, or where I felt the "vibe", and was more inclined to work with my teammates. To put it bluntly, if I think you're going to get us all killed, or you're making bad calls, etc. I will simply ignore you. I may try to recover the banners, but I mainly don't hesitate to be a solo player. This is the same thought process for a lot of players, as far as I can tell. In pubs, players first thoughts is themselves over the team. I try to be a team player, but most of my randoms usually end up in a deathbox, so yeah.
Teamwork in ranked: 3/10
- Reasoning: 7/10 times players do their own thing. They run as a duo team, or they run off as a solo, etc. Everyone plays their own way. In previous seasons, players made more of an effort to be a team. So, I would say for S16 and below, it was more of a 6/10 for teamwork. Now that ratting is basically the meta there's not as much teamwork as there used to be. I would say its a 2/10, or even a 1/10 like pubs, however players stay in the matches more, and for the most part they try their best, even if they're bad at the game.
Overall, in ranked, I could be minding my own business and then notice that both my teammates are following me and staying close to me. I take that as them deciding that I'm the "leader", and I would try my best to keep both of them alive and to work with them. (I keep the game chat muted at all times, its not worth having it unmuted unless they're friends). Sometimes I find myself following the other two and we work together, and for the most part, my randoms ping out things, even for items no one needs. In other words, rank had more on the line, and so players made more of an effort to stay alive. However with S17, they won't hesitate to run for the hills the moment ratting sounds like a better idea to them.
I will say that in terms of teamwork, its about mindset and playstyle. You can have teamwork but be bad at the game, you can have teamwork and rat the whole game, etc. I've played games where all 3 of us had terrible aim and it resulted in one of us running away. I had to recover both of the random's banners 2 times throughout the match, and they both had their turn doing the same with my banner card. One of these matches, we actually manage to win even though we were practically playing like a bunch of rookie players. (This was in S15). We were all trying to have each other's back, and by doing so, we managed to win.
That's the thing with Apex. Everyone has to be willing to try and change their playstyle to fit the team. Its much like how you don't really see the top pros like Hal, HisWattson, ItsTimmy, etc. play as "non-meta" legends. Back when Lifeline had the revive shield, she was meta, she was "overpowered", and the pros made teams where they used Lifeline's passive as a turning point for pretty much any fight in any match. Some players would even revive their teammates just to block incoming shots and then fire back, only to block the shots by reviving again. These were key strategies. In other words, if your teammates are taking things slow, take things slow, if they're pushing fights, push fights with them. For me personally, it isn't realistic to play how everyone else is playing, since I'm not used to different playstyles, and players can change tactics on a dime and I might not notice. I've had randoms who pushed fights, so I pushed, and then they ran away, and I was still fighting, thinking they were still with me.
The game is about adapting to change and to the team, however its not even second nature to most players, even I struggle with this. While a lot of times I think, "I should run", or "I should relocate", I could do that, and avoid dying with my teammates, but that's the thing... they didn't think to expect any kind of danager much like how I would fight teams as a 1v3, not realizing it. If the community was less toxic and the game was more balanced, and players had a general idea and common sense, and even an incentive to work with their teammates, then I'd say there would be a lot more teamwork.
Watch any of the ALGs matches as an example. These players don't have much room for toxicity, the games are more "balanced", (aka no heat shields, etc.), each team are pre-mades who play together, work together, and communicate together. They know what each other are good at, what they're bad at, which legends is meta or a good team combo, (like Revenant / Octane pre-nerf, Seer / Catalyst pre-nerf, etc.) They think about their actions more and they train themselves to react quickly in any situation. Then there's the last part, the incentive... who in their right mind would sabotage not only their teammates, but themselves out of the reward money?
In short, teamwork is a group mindset and the willingness to change how you play. If everyone isn't "vibing", or thinking alike, they will fall apart, especially if there's no communication in any way, including by pinging. If you do something and hope, (or just expect) your teammates would do something else, that in a way isn't teamwork. Teamwork would be if you go to shoot and they cover fire when you run for cover, (like how you would almost knock someone, so you go to push them when they run behind cover, only for the other two enemy teammates to push you right back).
The difference here is simple to explain, if I were to activate Valkyrie's ult and expect my teammates to stop what they're doing, that's not exactly teamwork. However, what I do and get better results from doing so, is that I ping, "my ultimate is ready", followed by, "lets go here". This tells both my teammates that I plan on using my ultimate. Most of my randoms would start making their way towards me. In the example above about the cover fire, if you expect your teammates to cover you, its not really teamwork, as teamwork would be more them covering you without you having to hope that they do, like that they both saw you were in danager and went to help, rather than putting yourself at risk, and hope they would risk getting killed for you.
