Supervive losing an important part of its niche

[Bzamo]

In my opinion, the biggest strength that this game had pre-patch was being one of the few games with a ranked system that actively encouraged fast-paced, aggressive play. While this is certainly still a thing, it's to a significantly lesser degree than before to the extent that the game is starting to feel less special to me.

Competitive/ranked gaming as a whole got very stale for me a long time ago, because, in my experience, ranked metagames across the board have gotten safer and more risk-averse over time. Especially in mid-mid high ranks in basically every game I've played over the years, players seem to feel like they have little to no incentive to take risks since taking no risks means less chance to throw the match and lose rating, even if by taking no risks, calculated or otherwise, they are preventing themselves from winning as well. Matches get longer and players spend more time scared to move the match forward, waiting for their opponents to make a mistake rather than taking calculated risks in the form of aggressive plays to force errors. Even with systems in place to discourage this behavior, players will take any advantage to play as safe as they can so they don't get screeched at by their fellow risk-adverse gamers, more scared of a brief, potential loss of rating than moving the game state forward.

Maybe that is more your thing: a slow, simmering tense and strategic experience rather than constant high intensity aggressive play, but also consider the value of having a game that is an exception to that paradigm. A game where even if you lose the match, you can still come out ahead rating-wise if you kick enough ass in the process.

From what I've seen, you were always able to get away with playing somewhat passively in this game. As long as you got at least a few kills and survived long enough per round, you would almost always climb, albeit far slower than a player who took constant, calculated risks. Snowballing could get annoying, but you could always come back quickly from behind. Now snowballing is even more focused around pve than it was before. Instead of cheesy starts to break the level cap and bowl over less savvy teams, which could be effectively stuffed by hot drops or aggressive counter-strats, we have long stretches of grinding basic mobs and denying farm to others, which often results in teams being left out of an opportunity for a comeback since there is nothing for them to farm, and winning a fight, even against a higher level team, is not guaranteed to put them back in the game due to the lower early-game XP scaling from kills and opens them up more than ever before to getting ganked by a third party.

What does this new system incentivize for teams that are behind? Looks like it's time to hide in a bush for minutes on end waiting for more farm, or wandering around semi-aimlessly looking for other teams to gank, knowing in the back of your mind that it's probably a bad idea to do so.

Matches are slower because there is far more downtime from endless farming, and the teams that get ahead level and gear-wise are the goons who aren't thinking about how much they are screwing over their RP gains by not fighting; they are minion destroying machines intent on gaining an advantage over you towards the end of the game when there is no kill-RP for them or anyone else to gain, condemning themselves to an eternity in a plat/diamond hell of their own making, never climbing but feeling pretty smug when they spam emotes on the few teams they are willing to fight. The fact that they are screwing themselves over in the long run doesn't matter when you are sitting in another 10 minute queue, down another 20-30 RP because no one is actually fighting and there are still somehow 8 teams left, remembering when the game used to be more fun.

"That's salt". "Oh boy that's some salt". "Wow, this guy's just salty". Yes I am annoyed. I love this game and want it to succeed. It's frustrating when changes are made to the game which deteriorate its niche by incentivizing modes of play that go against the spirit that originally made the game feel special.

Frankly it feels like I'm not the only one having less fun with the new system. The normally chill playerbase seems to be less communicative, and more prone to bm. The number of matches with teams full of players with close to zero damage at the end of a 10+ minute round heavy-sighing into their mics and complaining is not a good sign.

This is my experience in matches mostly consisting of mid-diamond+ players. If things get better at higher ranks where people actually understand how to rank up and have more fun with the game, I'm glad, but that's not going to be sustainable going forward if the majority of the playerbase is still going through growing pains this far after the patch.

Sorry for the excessive wordiness, and I sincerely hope that there is something I am missing that makes me completely wrong about all of this.

Thanks to everyone who has managed to keep the game fun regardless.

[Loser]

speak for yourself. My last 5 ranked matches in a row all end within 45 second because my team gets ganked by enemies that take no dmg and 1 shot me. Like i'll unload an entire Ghost clip/mag (I'm not american IDK guns) into an enemy and their hp moves less than 1%.