EA there’s only 4 viable legends in ranked ????

Blekerodo​ regarding play count / activity -> if you look at peak player count / player count increase you run across following main factors:

1. player increase around season 12.
   What happened there? Respawn created an easier to get Masters for the first? time, season 13 was known to be as "first free to take Masters" season and I personally without much effort also almost got it, fell a bit short at the same time went from "hardstuck" D4 to at the end D2 or D1, for sure was very close to Masters border at some point during that grind. Many of people whom I used to play via LFG on Discord at that time did jump from D4 to Masters
2. over past seasons along with player increase same trend followed number of Master players peaking at season 17? where it was just a matter of putting in time and grinding (ratting) more than others to get even Pred! I think to this point that was first season were it was free to take Pred!
3. After "everyone" got Pred/Masters you can see player base decline. Part of it might be the fact that content was not sufficient, for sure hacking became crazy bad, but I also know for sure that part of it was that everyone now had at least few Master badges, some even got Pred badges and there was no more motivation to grind ranked also ranked system was made tighter and people who got both for free now could not repeat and had to face the reality that they are back to D4 or in some cases even Platinum = hard ego blow after rocking those multiple Master / Pred badges

So I would argue that ranked, meta etc. has at most 50% impact on player base, most players in Apex are just not here for competitive grind, they are here to have shiny new skins, run and gun brainlessly and aimlessly, use controller + AA instead work having any interest in grinding the skill of MNK etc.

Basically I would conclude that out of those peak 600k players at best 200k were really competitive minded (at least a bit) and all the fall off since then has been because mostly uncompetitive "kids" looking for eye-candy switched to other games. Proof to that - I have played with loads of people in Apex legends official discord channel in LFG EU ranked -> blocked a lot of them for various reasons -> I get into Discord now and then and I still see blocked off messages in bulk = same people are still there actively grinding ranked, same as I do since season 7. It is not about meta, it is about who you are and how you play competitive shooters.