True, but is it really the fairest type of fight if you dive straight into a hot drop and just pray for RNG to give you the purple shield/peacekeeper?
That's why (in theory) I prefer Arenas, because it has strategy AND fairness. (once again, in theory)
I don't consider poking a fun/compelling strategy, which is sad since it's the meta in the current implementation.
The fairest type of fight is never the most fun.
An empty arena with P2020's is perhaps the fairest fight you could have in the game. Whether a scenario is fair, doesn't tell you a lot about whether a scenario is enjoyable, or engaging.
In any case, for me whether it's fair, or not doesn't really factor into the reasons I dislike arenas as is. I dislike the downtime in arenas. I dislike the stop and start gameplay, and I dislike the repetition of playing the same angles over and over again. I feel that you could have a perfectly 'fair' gametype while also having something that's much more fast-paced, such as a mode with respawns.
Take Rogue company for instance. Rogue company has two game modes. One is a respawn based elimination mode, it's tense, you get 1 life per round and therefore their can be a lot of downtime. Similar to battle royale games, if you die you can end up sat watching your team for a few minutes before they pick you up, or until the round ends. However, recognising that that experience isn't for everyone, or isn't what people want all of the time, the alternative mode is a mode called Strikeout. It shares the same maps as elimination, but you have different objectives and you're able to respawn into the arena persistently.
It's not somehow less fair because players are able to respawn, and the respawns keep players in the action longer. In Apex, we had a similar mode with the Winter Express event. Didn't everyone enjoy that? Admittedly Winter Express had some odd kinks with the fact that it featured 3 teams, and a constantly moving train, but the action was there in Winter express, you could get back to back fights in scenarios that you couldn't see in the regular battle royale.
As it is right now, the fights in arenas feel as though they are just the final fight that you get in battle royale. When there's one team left, and it's just you versus them, it's not that different to what it is in arenas. At that stage, in the final circles everyone usually has the same shield category anyway, and their weapons of preference. So for me, it doesn't really feel like arenas are offering anything that I'm not getting out of the battle royale mode. That's why I wanted something different, more fast paced and altogether less stressful to be honest.
A side issue with arenas, is the repetition that sits in really quickly. The problem with how arenas are designed versus how other elimination style game modes are designed, is that the arenas have entirely open sightlines. Take artillery as an example, you can get on top of one of the buildings and see the vast majority of the viable playable space at any one time. This creates scenarios where players are naturally drawn to, and play the exact same angles every time, because there are angles which are objectively the best and most obvious to play each time.
This doesn't happen so much in other elimination style games, because they have much more closed sightlines. So there are many more opportunities to flank, and use alternative strategies. In Apex, it feels like any sort of flank is a huge risk because of the open sightlines (so you'll almost always be seen), long time to kill (reducing the impact of flanks), and fact that one of the easiest ways to get a pick, is to just turn and stack a single player (increasing the risk of a flank). The way the maps are designed in Apex Legends, with persistently clear sightlines, is done because this is a battle royale, and the maps need to be readable. It needs to be obvious where players are located across a large space, you don't want to have large obstructions in every POI because they harm the flow of the game. But in an arena 3 vs 3, I'd argue that more obstructions and more interesting map designs would make for much more interesting and varied gameplay, Respawn didn't take this into consideration when designing the new maps, so they become very stale very quickly with the same sightlines being played each time dependant on the ring close position.
Another issue with arenas that you don't have in other elimation style games, is the way that the time to kill makes it so that 1 vs 3s, or even 1 vs 2s, don't often feel achievable. In games like Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant or Counterstike, the elimination system is a ruleset that works because matches don't swing on a single pick. Why is this? Because the time to kill is low, so even if you end up down a team mate, or four, you still have outplay potential. In arenas that only feels possible if you vastly outweigh the ability level of the opposing team, with most round outcomes being predicted after the first knock, and all but confirmed on a second. It goes back to that entirely deterministic style of gameplay that I was talking about disliking. I like my games to be skill based, Valorant is skill based and entirely fair too, but at the same time, the skill ceiling in terms of how it impacts match outcomes, is wider in a game like Apex Legends. A bad player in Valorant will usually lose to a good player, but there's some theoretical potential for them to come out on top, even if it's infrequent.
In Apex, there are too many scenarios where the writing is on the wall, before the match has concluded. Sometimes before the match has even started. When I'm fighting a pred or master team, unless I'm playing with an especially good group of friends, it usually feels like I'm the only one able to keep up in terms of damage. Before the match even begins, it feels as the match outcome is not just predictable, but set in stone because of how Apex is designed. For me that isn't very exciting, and you already get enough of that with battle royale.
Again, none of this is necessarily terrible, but I don't find it very interesting. For me it doesn't fill a gap in what Apex Legends already offered. I already have that gameplay in end-game fights in either ranked, or unranked. What Apex doesn't have is a mode where people can play in a more relaxed style, where people can play with their team and it not matter what quality your team mates are. Where I can practice my aim and movement and just have fun with the game and its systems without worrying about whether my team mate losing too much HP on a damage exchange is going to cause us to snowball into a defeat.
Sorry for the essay.