I agree with most of this, but I don't entirely agree on the LGBT representation part. Yes it is better to make it have lore relevance, yes. But I don't really think it's necessary. I really liked the way Overwatch handled Soldier: 76 on this note, even though half of the community complained and whined about it (which made it even better). It was just sort of woven in, that he had an ex-boyfriend years ago, and it's really left at that. That's good because they didn't DIVE into ALL of the details and they really just spelled it out and also told a touching story all the same. At least it wasn't handled like Fernando from Paladins where it was randomly dropped in that "yeah he's gay." It doesn't offend me whatsoever, but they should have elaborated a little bit more. But of course Hi-Rez can't do f***ing lore worth a s*** so... I guess it's not bad considering that. Though I can understand the idea of it getting to be pandering, I've yet to see real examples of it yet. I may not know about Apex Legends so I don't really understand the situation there.
@Black Sabbath also has a good point here, sort of. I think that it can get to be pandering if there are too many for no apparent reason and it's beyond representative of the real percentage in the population (somewhere around 8.5% last I remembered). Nonetheless, the "elaboration" I'm talking about with Fernando doesn't need to be long. It only needs to be a little tidbit that makes it understandable why the character was written to be LGBT. It doesn't need to be an event important to the game's lore or even one that has much relevance to it. Just a little bit of a story behind it, a little bit that makes there be even a small amount of importance to the character's backstory. Heck, I think the way it was handled with Doctor Samuels from Borderlands 2 was enough, when Handsome Jack brought up her wife when forcing her to conduct Eridium experiments on people.