No heat shields?

Sounds like you are one of those unaware players who can't keep track of ring timing, fight duration, rotation paths.

Removal of heat shields in combination with more aggressive later rings was designed especially if not solely for players like you and partly to prevent intentional campers who just avoided everyone living on the edge / in the zone, healing while other squads fight to secure positive RR mainly in ranked lobbies.

Players like you need to change a mentality of "every game I will win / have advantage". Apex is game of chance, we are not in ALGS or whatever where teams have predetermined known landings and pretty much known preferable rotations. Every game for randoms player like you and me in Apex is basically a random game so you have to accept that:

• in some games you will be put in the spot where instantly your landing spot will be surrounded by teams and you will have major disadvantage e.g. Estates in Olympus = you can't expect to stay there forever and win multiple fights of 3rd parties, instead you need to rotate out ASAP
• in some cases you will be able to 3rd party easily e.g. Rift in Olympus = you can choose which fight to take as usually Gardens will be fighting, Power grid / Fight night side, new POI I cba to memorize the name while I don't play the game because of cheaters
• in some cases you will be looking for a fight if other players run away from you to get engaged in further POI e.g. Overlook sometimes happen that way that teams from surrounding gravitate towards Fragment instantly, other part of the lobby take fights around Staging or Lava Siphon = you will have lower KP game

Pros and streamers who clearly use hacks and radars have set this fake standard that you can do 10+ KP per game easily while if you see average stats per game for other teams or ALGS stats it usually show that:

1. 10 or so teams = 50% don't get ANY KP per game or for sure less than 4 = at most won 1 fight and lost the next one
2. TOP 3-5 teams get absolute majority of all KP per game
3. Average TOP 3 team KP (except hackers, streamers, pros that farm everyone) is / should be <10 = 3 fights + at random some 3rd party picks or solo enemy picks while rotating

Current state of the game is totally fine, balanced especially if you play legit lobbies where wallhackers don't hard gatekeep you / "guess perfectly" your rotations to cut you off again and again. If you die to zone = 90%+ it indicates you have above mentioned skill gaps and should improve. It actually has been always like that even before survival items were invented and smart teams prioritized rotation into or close to end zone (via scanning consoles ASAP) as picking people off as they run into a zone is jut too easy - just this split grinding a battle pass I managed to set up rampart fortress next to ring edge -> people kept coming in and I use Sheila to instantly delete like 3 squads being solo person on Olympus bridge next to estates, actually had time to reload Sheila 3 times until my festivity was interrupted by a 3stack that jumped me when I already was done :) it was unfair yet great plan that I executed and was really happy about = scan ring, predict choke point, rotate there without being involved in other fights = time without action, farm and end up with 8 KP (some squads were not full, one squad I think run away) which made me a kill leader for a split second, not sure if anyone actually beat that.