New Ranked Mode

"why be disgruntled about something you don't prefer"

There are a lot of things in life that I don't have a taste for... does that mean I can't have an opinion about them? Not to mention the fact that a lot of the things I dislike about this game's ranked mode are arbitrary decisions made my the developer - decisions that could just as easily be unmade if they had a little feedback. Which, can we all agree, they desperately need?

"Apex is a F2P game that does best when it's "evolving"."

Agree and disagree. For the first twenty seasons this game evolved. In the last few seasons Respawn has moved beyond evolution into degrees of change that almost make the game unrecognizable from one season to the next. Preset drops are a good example of that. The only people who ever complained about random drops are solo queue players who can't or won't get on the same page as their squadmates. That's the nature of solo queueing a team-based game. And from what little ranked I've played this season, I'm observing that these pre-set drops are far from a guarantee that the squad will stay together, or that the pace-of-play will hit some magic sweet spot in every match. They don't. It doesn't. It's just more groupthink for people incapable of thinking for themselves or exercising good judgment.

"it's best to stay tight and fight hard together."

When was this ever not true in Apex??? Anybody who needs this spelled out for them, much less enforced upon them, has bigger problems. And will only make it out of Gold with an aimbot.

"If you leave your team you'll most likely run into another team on their path to the safe zone, teams holding an area, etc."

This is only true if a soloing player is inexperienced or utterly oblivious. There are players who make it their mission in life to get safely to second place without the aid of their teammates. Who are mostly already dead anyway as the average player in this game has the attention span of a fruit fly. It isn't hard to do if it's something a player wants to do. But most would rather get into the first available fight, no matter how ill-considered the circumstances, and die pointlessly in 18th place. And after six years they still can't grasp that they're playing a survival game mode and not a "most kills wins" mode. Or if they do grasp it then they still behave as if they don't care. What is a thoughtful placement-oriented player supposed to do with that? Forcing the team to  drop together doesn't force them to stay together, and if they'd rather be dead then there is no amount of "evolution" that will fix them.

"Before the update you could traverse the map and not encounter enemy teams as much as the current build."

Again, my experience of ranked this season only amounts to a dozen or so matches, but this has not been my experience at all. In my lobbies players all drop where they're told to drop. Then they loot for exactly 30 seconds. You could set your watch by it. Then they run to the center of the map for the exact same pile up **bleep** show they wanted before the developer put this obstacle in their way. You can take the kid out of the hot drop but you can't take the hot drop mentality out of the kid. Period. Or maybe you can in diamond. I'll let you know when I get there.