Playing Apex Legends With Randos Sucks - Here's Why

We Hate Playing With Randos

The verdict is out, playing with random people – affectionately ‘randos’ – is one of the worst parts of Apex Legends.

You want to play the wildly popular battle royale game but none of your friends are online. The Solo and Duo queues were a nice solution to this but were only limited-time modes to get our feet wet.

What usually happens is that ready up for a game and get matched with two strangers who:

A) have never played before
B) don’t actually want to play with you
C) OR a combination of the hundreds of other things that randos do

We’ve experienced firsthand some of the worst randos out there. We also polled the Average Gamer community for their inputs to see what other trends are out there.

Here are the common themes we’ve seen and some suggestions that we’d like to offer to Respawn to fix them!

Jumpmaster Woes

There are a plethora of ‘feels bad’ moments that come out of playing with randos. It makes sense that the first thing we go over is jumping out of the dropship.

The concept of being a jumpmaster is simple. Hop out and get your squad safely to the ground, preferably near some decent loot.

This is apparently too much for some people. Let’s skim over some of the trouble areas when it comes to having a random player as a jumpmaster.

The “I’m not picking” – Level 1

BasementDweller04 has relinquished the jumpmaster role.

I’m sure everyone has seen this. We get it, not every game do you want to decide where to go. In fact, most people don’t. That’s why Respawn rotates who is chosen to be jumpmaster (sort of).

If you really hate being jumpmaster, there are even strategies for helping your odds. When you don’t manually select your legend, the previous selector will jump. If no one selects, though, the first person gets the honor.

The “I’m not picking” – Level 2

IH8Teammates3000 has relinquished the jumpmaster role.

IH8Teammates3000 is jumping solo.

This is one of the most confusing things out there. The rando decides to hop out on his own. Our only guess is that he’s out challenge hunting.

If that is the case, why not just bring your teammates there. You haven’t even given them time to object! It may be an obscure landing location, but we want to go too.

The “I’m refilling my Cheetos and Juicy Juice”

There is a painful realization when you are about 3/4 of the way across the map, have yet to jump, and the hot zone is in the rearview mirror. Is little Johnny even on the other side that microphone?

Maybe he ran to take a bathroom break? Maybe he’s re-upping on his snacks? Unfortunately for your squad’s chances, you are now past the point of jumping and getting to the last POI in a timely manner.

Now you are swan diving to the terrifying sight of multiple enemies opening their 3rd supply crates. See you in the lobby soon…

From the crew

Randos! When they are jumpmaster, they relinquish and then solo drop…if they’re not jumpmaster, they just solo drop.

When they drop me in the middle of a hot zone. Are these idiots trying to win?

Landing Woes

Landing is the jelly to jumping’s peanut butter. If the random isn’t already the jumpmaster (or perhaps they passed it to you), you are yet to be in the clear.

The “Let’s hold hands” – Level 1

If it’s not already an unwritten rule, someone needs to umm.. unwrite it. Breaking off and landing at your own building – save for some of the bigger buildings in the cities – is a must.

Nothing is worse than a teammate who stays next to you the entire time. Upon landing, you grab the body armor and gun. Your teammate continues to follow you before getting melted by the enemy team, with nothing to his name but a 1X scope and a gray shotgun bolt.

The “Let’s hold hands” – Level 2

Everything about Level 1 but they are a better looter. So you are the one empty-handed as the first fight commences. Feels bad…

From the crew

I would have to say when they land miles away from the team.

Revive Woes

Sometimes, it’s better to finish a fight before you try to pick up a teammate. In all other scenarios, it’s best to revive your downed friend to even the odds against an opposing squad.

Randos don’t seem to understand this.

For a rando, revives are low on the priority list. You could be crawling at their feet with exactly zero enemies within a 100-meter radius, and they still won’t pick you up!

The Indecisive Medic

This rando will begin reviving you then stop because he thinks he hears an enemy. A couple of seconds later, he’ll realize that there’s no one around and then return to try to pick you up.

Alas, he’ll soon realize that his guns aren’t reloaded and immediately end the revive animation in favor of new ammo clips. Once both guns have been reloaded, he may come back for you. However, it’s more likely that the initial enemy would have returned to finish off your squad.

At this point, it’s a crapshoot. There’s a 9% chance that the rando pulls off a clutch play to quickly wipe out the opposition. Don’t hold your breath though.

The Unaware Healer

This person has good intentions but also has pretty poor game sense. It might be low audio or just a lack of situational awareness, but this rando will always get killed while trying to revive.

To make things worse, this rando will ignore your frantic pings while the enemy is running right toward him! It’s as though the battle royale gods were sitting around a table brainstorming the best way to force rage quits. Smdh…

From the crew

When you pull off a clutch play to save the squad, revive your downed rando and then the rando immediately goes to loot up the gold box, taking all your well-deserved loot.

When they do not pick up your banner…then go rogue

“How Do You Play” Woes

We try not to be too hard on new players. Being unaccepting of people attempting to learn a game can just lead to a toxic community. We know that a toxic community is one that won’t grow. A community that isn’t growing is one that is dying. This means the game you love will eventually not have players to play against. So when all else fails, be kind.

However, there is a Training and Firing Grounds mode to learn the basics. Players can test how abilities work and weapons operate. Here are a few occasions things went too far.

The “I don’t know how to use Crypto”

We are in the final quarter of this season. That means we all have had plenty of time to figure out how the newest legend works.

Today’s friendly Crypto rando apparently didn’t get the memo.

He pulled out his drone – for the first time, with 6 squads remaining – and immediately EMP’d us. There was no one around. Thankfully there isn’t friendly-fire on that ability. It would have been a terrible bonus to have to waste shield cells on this folly.

That’s not all though. In another game, Flash was lucky enough to have a Crypto on his team rescue his banner with the drone. Great technique.

From here though, the player continued to fly the drone to a respawn beacon. After circling it, then flying away and back a few times, the realization hit.

This player did not know you cannot respawn with the drone. In fact, that would be crazy overpowered, if possible. Instead, about 45 seconds were wasted in this charade.

Finally, realizing his defeat, he decided to walk his way from Thermal Station toward Epicenter. Go ahead and close your eyes. Imagine those locations.

Yes, they aren’t close at all, Also yes, you should be running, ziplining, ballooning, doing everything you can to get there swiftly.

Thankfully the misery was ended as he jogged next to an equally-lost player shuffling through the storm. They noticed each other and killed one another. They were still a good mile from the circle’s edge. Feels bad.

The “I gotta ping everything”

The ping system is innovative and has simplified comms in a way that can make for beautiful teamwork. If you’d like you can also just ping everything!

Sure, letting people know that there’s a “mozambique here” is funny every few rounds, but imagine that each piece of loot is called out for you. Every. Single Time.

You know good and well that we don’t need that level 1 barrel stabilizer after 15 minutes in the same game with 3 squads left. We understand that you want to be helpful, but this is overkill. Relax.

From the crew

The lack of coordination and communication in scenarios where it is needed most.

When they run around tagging trash weapons. Knock that crap off.

On the rare occassions they do have microphones, annoying background noises

Connection Woes

Teammates losing connection to the Apex servers can be caused by many different scenarios. Perhaps a thunderstorm just rolled into your town? Maybe you are past due on your internet bill?

It’s highly likely that your cat swiped a power cord out from the wall. Or perhaps you live 5 miles from nowhere and your connection is always spotty? Maybe Santa tripped on your satellite dish?

I’m sure we would be surprised to hear some of the more ridiculous ways you’ve been disconnected from an online game. The reality is that none of these scenarios are all that likely.

There’s an even smaller chance of these scenarios happening at the particular moments that they happen. Here are some of the more notorious times we have said goodbye to our third:

The “I just died, time to leave” – Level 1

We’ve all been in the scenario where after you win a teamfight, you look up and realize that your team strength has dropped from 3 to 2 online members.

When did they leave? Why did they leave?!

Being so consumed with the chaos you must have missed just when your downed teammate decided to call it quits. Had they stuck around they’d be dropping out of the respawn ship and on their way to a strong endgame.

The “I just died, time to leave” – Level 2

Everything from the above scenario except they stayed until the end of the fight. As you are replacing your broken shield before heading to the respawn beacon, the random leaves in a rage.

Thinking you are only looting and will keep them at bay for the rest of the game, they leave. If they gave it 7 more seconds they would realize you only healed up enough so not to die on the revive mission. They would see your Wraith portal or Pathfinder zipline placed to conveniently retrieve their loot.

Keep the faith.

The “I just died, time to leave” – Level 3

To get this to level 3, imagine the previous scenario playing out but add in about 75 pings before they ultimately abandon the game. Leaves a great taste in your mouth from the salty teammate who rage quits.

One thing needs to be said about these players. Often times they are not the most technically sound players. We know this because in the times they do stick around to get revived, and have time to get their loot back, they end up dying again and again.

The “Gotta go, dinner is ready”

An argument can be made if this brings more pain than the previous scenarios.

Have you ever been rotating and you see the red ring of death around your teammates banner. Did they have to leave right now? Did one of the crazy scenarios mentioned in the intro actually happen?

Welp, time to try to finish out this top 6 situation.

From the crew

When they die and immediately quit. It’s the most annoying thing in the world.

As soon as they get knocked, they leave the game without giving teammates a chance to revive or respawn them. They basically act like they’re playing a solo game!

How to Fix

Respawn has done a great job creating a polished, enjoyable battle royale. We don’t want to be haters and we understand that there will always be areas of improvement. Last month we gave suggestions for a refined stats page and now we want to help make the rando experience more bearable.

For starters, let’s implement some sort of endorsement system. Currently, there’s really no reason to be reasonable towards online strangers in Apex. This is primarily the case for the normal queue but even holds true at lower levels of ranked play.

Overwatch has one that works okay, so let’s build off of that. It’d be really simple to allow squadmates to earn extra XP by receiving votes from their team. Now that Respawn has made it more achievable to earn heirloom sets, this could be attractive to the Apex community.

Next, let’s add an option for solo queue players to opt-out of being the jumpmaster! What we’ve noticed is that the solo player often gets matched with a random duo pair to fill out the squad. If that’s the case, give us the democratic flexibility to let the two grouped players choose the location!

Speaking of customization, can we have more settings for pings? How about allowing players to turn off all pings unrelated to a requested item?

We could also use a boost to the ping system, but that could be a post in itself. For now, we’ll take an option for “revive me” or “don’t revive me”. Simple.

It’s Not All Bad

We’ve had randos who have been absolute legends, some of whom we friended and played with again. Here’s a bit of positivity to end with some cheer!

I had a game where I was playing with two kids who must have been around middle school age. They were feelin themselves and actually did ok. I wasn’t mad

There was this one time where the GOAT of Apex carried us through multiple games. This man would run into the most crowded area, kill everyone, take all of their good sh*t, bring it back to us, drop it so we can take it, and tag where he was going next, and take off to go murder and pillage again. He’s a GAWD.

This guy is just really down to Earth. We got to talking and turns out we had the same philosophy about having fun in games and being decent people to online strangers. He’s since intro’d me to a bunch of his PSN homies.

What do you hate about playing with randos? Got any stories to share? Leave a comment below to share our pain!