The game should be better. It has all the features to be better than cs:go... Yet it just fails horribly at everything it tries to modernize/do.
People are saying that this game "Will rise again" and that "People leaving will come back" and such, but I don't believe that is the case (for another 5 years), because the whole game-design and and issues which quite literally can't be resolved without downgrading features they've worked at/graphical changes (more on this later).

It really feels like that this game has been made to just be streaming game which you just watch and just LOVE the graphics but like, who really cares about that... At all?
Of course if you are not watching it there should be NO compromise for gameplay (input lag, scene rendering lag, etc).
Is it crazy to not care about graphics while playing something competitively?
Its not like pro players (and regular players too) change their resolution to 4:3 which quite literally just makes the game look horrible, showing a big middle-finger to the engine update (the engine is great for how beautiful it is, but it's not fit for competitive gameplay).

Having beautiful graphics would be great... If there wasn't any competitive compromise, which just isn't possible with
computing power at this day and age(and we are reaching limits of what to improve without putting on more cores (Moore's law) / using AI (AI RTX shaders, AI Upscaling, ...) / Ground-breaking technology).
It almost feels like that the people whole talk most about the graphics and engine aren't the actual players, but people like Philip whom strokes his schlong by looking at his water reflection and youtubers which actually don't play the game (They might just watch tournaments or just open cases).

Sub-tick... Oh sub-tick... It is quite literally in the name. Sub-tick. The game still runs at normal tickrate, BUT some actions are bound to send packets to server without being limited by good'ol tickrate. Most games quite literally use tick-rate, and there are good reasons to it. From not ruining synchronization to not increasing amount of bugs.
Running This approach increases the amount of complexity, meaning there will be more issues and there are already issues which can't be just simply fixed like rapid-fire exploit.
There are also various issues with synchronization and... Running at different fps!!! Wow who would've expected that!
I make games, therefore I have more qualifications to speak about this.
Remember the movement discrepancies with jump height and walking acceleration? Well, this is issue with something called delta-time. Delta-time is time between frames, meaning, for example: 150 FPS would have lower delta time, because
there are more frames in the span of second than 60 fps.
Right, so what is the issue? The fact that fps change alot. A LOT lot. Therefore delta-time shouldn't be used for physics,
because it makes physics calculations very unstable (results change alot).
Therefore jumping, accelerating and other PHYSICS-based actions are not stable, meaning they will NOT be same every time they run (the literal issue that accelerating/jumping had).
Although MOST logic runs at 64-tick, all the important logic gameplay-wise is pretty much ran at this sub-tick nonsense.
That is one of the compromises which they choose just for this (inconsistencies)... Pretty much useless thing.
The only thing it would make sense to use it at would be shooting and nothing else, because it is simply, in its purest form just
raycast hit from player's camera at direction sent by client (that is how silent-aim works by the way, by sending look direction while actually not looking at it creates silent-aim).
Sub-tick doesn't make sense in competitive game, because it is inconsistent in many elements.

Input lag... Isn't it obvious that it is caused by all these... Like mostly useless visual elements? The graphics overhaul comes
at massive input lag compromise and other games like Valorant chose to make the game in their cartoony style, which comes with the benefit of not having to make realistic visual elements, having freedom of creativity and... Not using too much computing power.
Counter-strike 2 tried copying Valorant while outdoing them. They failed because they were scrambling at what to change
that would be better than Valorant. They chose to surpass them at graphics (at input-lag compromise) and tried adding new
sub-tick method (which adds inconsistencies and unfixable exploits).
Valorant took massive inspiration from CS:GO. They chose to make improvements where it made sense, while keeping what made
CS:GO great. They focused on visual clarity (outside of the scope of abilities) and made meaningful improvements like inventory
system. They did a good job.
Valorant took inspiration from CS:GO and improved upon it, Counter-strike 2 tried copying Valorant, and they failed horribly.

Anti-cheat, endless hot topic. Valve chose the future-proof way of catching cheaters while making current-day horrible.
They should've found balance between making their game secure now, and working on future-proof systems. They chose to
focus on one sole solution.
Valve is innovating anti-cheat measures at the cost of current-time experience. Game will be filled with cheaters for unspecified time.

This game is fundamentally broken and the structure is technological mess with trying to make the game pretty, while having the game run good while having the smallest amount of input lag. I can just imagine Gaben or some higher ups saying something like: "Why can't we have all?" which just doesn't make sense now, does it? Get too greedy and you will have nothing. (not trying to put words into people's mouths)

The game is simply, unfixable for the next many years to come.

...
Welp, CS:GO finished downloading, time to have blast on community servers haha!