I need to vent this badly.
The key to climbing in any team-based ranking system has always been to make the best decisions individually that you can and to not allow potentially poor decisions by your teammates to hold you back. This is true for almost all competitive games (CS:GO, R6, Dota 2, LoL, OW). I'm plat 3 strictly solo and when my silver teammates with zero accolades ping some random hot drop, I almost never drop with them anymore. They lose their 1v1s ~95% of the time in those lobbies and disconnect within 10-15 seconds. They also have little to no concept of tactical retreat and team-play.
The opportunity cost is too different for us. On one hand, as a plat player I have 15-20 minute queues and have a 3 RP entry cost. My bronze/silver teammates have a 10 second queue, their matches are free/cost 1 RP, and their lobbies are significantly easier than mine on average. It makes a lot of sense for them to drop hot as that's one of the most efficient ways to climb at that rank. I have to be very careful about how I play to climb so I typically end up camping and taking smart fights at the end if my team isn't skilled. It's very punishing for me to hot drop and lose an rng 50/50 fight at this point.
Keep in mind that I have my 20 kill/4k damage badge on two legends. Playing aggressive is the most fun thing for me in the game by far. However, if you want that juicy RP in higher ranks as a solo, you need to engage the brain a bit.
I'm hoping that as the higher ranks become more saturated this won't be as much of an issue. People will generally play smarter and value placement over early kills and also be more willing to retreat if the fight is unfavorable.
Just as a random example, I had a silver 4 player screaming (literally) at me yesterday because I refused to push into longbows that had high ground when the fight was 100% pointless and retreating was free. What ended up happening? He died nearly instantly to said longbows, disconnected with 11 squads remaining, and then I proceeded to place top 3 with 2 kills (+6 RP) simply by not pushing longbows that have skullpiercers and an unreachable position.
So yeah, I'm sorry if I don't drop with you every game but I gotta look out for myself as a solo player very interested in climbing to Apex Predator.
That is all. Good luck to everybody out there trying to climb.
Just a little tip: One of the best ways to drop smart is to wait in the ship and watch where all of your opponents are dropping. Avoid and plan a smart looting/rotation route based on where you think your enemies will rotate to. Probably obvious but i figured i'd throw something positive into this very negative post.
