I wrote this during the pandemic year. I stand by it still, mostly. Just be warned that it is from Old Claymore.
All games involve random chance. This is a given, as it is impossible to completely sterilize a gaming environment. Chance in games is not a bad thing, it's a fact of life. This fact makes determining when too much chance is being used somewhat difficult. I argue, however, that Battle Royale as a genre involves entirely too much chance to be fun - worse, I consider Battle Royale to be damaging to young people in the same way that gambling is damaging.
Such a claim is fairly outlandish, but bear with me.
The problem with Battle Royale is not any of the parts that people immediately think of when they think "battle royale." It's not the dwindling player count, it's not the shrinking circle, it's not the large, open map (though this last one does exacerbate the problem). The issue is simply how much is determined by luck.
Let's consider, for a moment, the basic mechanics of a team-based first person shooter. When you drop into, say, a Battlefield match, there are a number of things already under your control or that are otherwise predictable. You'll have a loadout prepared, you'll have an objective to head towards, and you'll know roughly where the enemy is because of the locations of map objectives.
All of these things are randomized in a Battle Royale setting. The player is not in control of loadouts, has no objective for some time into the round, and has no idea where enemy placement is. This sounds, conceptually, like a great formula for keeping things fresh. It is, however, far more insidious than it appears on the surface.
By robbing the player of the agency given by loadout selection, the player experiences several consequences: (a) the outcome of any given match is now determined by how good the player is with whatever weapon the game decides to give him, instead of being determined by the player's overall skill, (b) learning weapons is much more difficult because it's impossible to predictably spend more time with a sore-spot weapon, and (c) creates a power disparity between players that is determined entirely by chance. If one player gets a massive shotgun straight off the drop, and the other four people around him find nothing but weapon attachments and grenades, that one player has just been given a win by pure chance and those other four have been given a loss entirely by chance.
This loadout problem is already pretty bad, but it gets worse.
The lack of any kind of set map objective to head towards means that it's impossible to predict where other players will drop off the ship, so learning how players tend to interact with the map and common routes taken by enemies is substantially more time consuming than in a smaller-scale, more traditional objective mode. This also creates circumstances wherein, rather than finding one another and having an encounter, players may commonly run past one another entirely or are likely to have a one-sided encounter. Getting "out" in a BR because someone you couldn't see or avoid shot you in the back of the head is not good game design.
Losing a round in BRs is never satisfying. In a more traditional shooter, the match has an ebb and flow back and forth over time. BRs never experience this ebb and flow. Either you succeed, and move on, or you lose. Since players can't rejoin the match, the developers have to find another way to encourage people to remain invested, and that way is addiction-triggering game design. Most BRs are built to create that "just one more round" sensation on-death, creating a loop where players will eventually numb themselves by falling and dying round after round, chasing a "good RNG" match to win to break the cycle.
These flaws may sound like mere complaints with the genre, but I argue that there is an insidious downside to this genre for impressionable young people.
Now more than ever, the young are completely disenfranchised from their own lives. The public school system ensures that no young person will have to make any life altering decisions until adulthood. Social media demands constant attention, and the winds of social favor on such platforms is unpredictable. Getting a job is difficult, and getting a job that pays enough to live off of even more so. The young are being shown situation after situation wherein they have no control, and this is not a healthy way to live. Greater locus of control is healthy.
The addictive mechanisms that keep players coming back to Battle Royale titles also numb the player to the pain of losing control. "Oh, I dropped and got ratfucked immediately because someone picked up a golden R301 and I picked up a level one barrel stabilizer and a medkit, might as well run another round!" is an example of this kind of thinking in action. Jumping, helplessly, round after round into the meatgrinder because you've been so battered by the changing whims of RNG, not ever expecting a win, is a deeply unhealthy way to interact with gaming. I believe this kind of gameplay creates apathy and encourages the player to let go of control of their own lives in an unhealthy way.
Overall rating: 4/10 for being fun and unhealthy