u/Good_Reaction8185

My biggest problem with this game is that even if you perform well—hitting everything correctly in any team mode and dodging multiple times—you can still lose. In fact, many systems in this game actively work against you in ways you can barely counter. Take, for example, a 1v2 scenario. If you are carrying your team—putting in the effort and landing all your moves—but an ally isn't pulling their weight or at the very least keeping the enemies busy for you to land hits then get out, you are sort of fated to lose from the get-go. This is because, when you attack someone, regardless of whether it was a hit, you get stuck in the animation for free, leaving you open for others to crush you during that moment. There is no way to win the game without eventually attacking, and this massive mechanical flaw seems constantly detrimental to the entire experience. I know other brawlers in the genre have something similar, but usually, the "self inflicted animation stun" you take from performing an strike is much smaller than, let's say, one to three whole seconds of attacking someone alone.

I swear, If this could have been solved way earlier on at the launch of the game and it had taken an entire different approach to it—then i think it would have arguable made the game better and more likeable for everyone else... Even bots like Lettuce will farm your bot while multiple moves such as Nui/Brick ones will cause them to behave weirdly and make you lose the match because you simply cannot win alone in this even if you can see the attack coming. There's an chance that If you get into a bot match in any team mode, the enemy bots will be better and act at the right moments, absolutely humbling you easily if they keep saving the opponent player every time you score an win to the point where if you never lost to them in neutral even once, you can still lose the game onto those interactions alone already.

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Besides, to make matters worse, there are too many other systems that are truly terrible in my opinion. Don't get me wrong; I really liked the rune update because it allowed you the opportunity to win more often, plus the update to increase Trophy Collector max stacks from 3 to 6 was an really wonderful one in my eyes even if people don't look at it very much. Also liked the Rupture spell update an bunch. However, I did not like the spells in general update as much, nor eventually the Unyielding immortality update that came to the game at some point.

I am referring to how some spells in the game feel very nasty to play against at times because they actively stop you from carrying without the enemy putting in as much effort as you are. If they have "Turn Over" and you are Melee, while also being the only person actively trying to really win on your team, then they are easily going to put a huge dent in your plans with the press of a button alone—sometimes you can bait it out but if they are smart they won't use it carelessly and will constantly use this on you alone multiple times per game. Meanwhile, "Heal" and "Unyielding" (not an spell, just bringing it up), can constantly stop you from getting kills to stack your "Trophy Collector" if you are going for that or another on-kill mechanic in this game that you constantly rely on to win. I don't mind the other spells, it's just that Leap, the Movement one, the Barrier one and so on are more of an "maybe an play can happen here", or "maybe I can do something great with it" meanwhile heal is just 4500 HP to their entire team (1500 per person) with only one keypress. The point is, you literally have to do nothing to trigger the immortality period of Unyielding, and despite how small it seems, the reward it gives is just too huge especially for modes where not dying is super important, meanwhile Turn Over/Heal just screws you at the current moment and makes you lose tons of momentum you could have had to win the game. If Unyelding were made like Strike Barrier, and Heal/Turn Over had some more limitations where you actively have to perform an action to get said reward like Leap and "the blue shoes" does, then I would understand it, but you sort of don't; the game pretty much "plays for you" in this context in comparision. It always brings value no matter what you do, and the worse you play the more triggers of it you get per match.

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Other things I dislike as someone who came from other games are the super armor and invincibility mixed with some ultimates and moves in this game. I am talking about Timun's ultimate, Lettuce's ultimate, Gumi's ultimate, Yong Yong's charge skill, Marina's ground skill, and maybe more that I am forgetting currently. In this game, most of the things you can dodge─I don't care about those status on most things actually and think they are rather fair. However, let's say, for example, Lettuce stacks her ultimate points onto a clueless ally OR bot that doesn't even lift an finger to dodge and ults towards you; you are going to be forced to lose tons of time on the objective for a mistake you did not even make yourself. Lettuce can literally stack infinitely on your bots or allies without hitting you once with her Heavy Attack, and somehow when she presses the ult button, now it's your problem and it's going to soak a lot of your time that you could use to win... Of course, it won't be with the intention of hitting you, but that's sort of what it is currently. Ultimates and moves like these just need to waste YOUR time to win, while many characters like Zeppetta, Pinocchio, Yong Yong, Nui, Ravi, etc., have to actively hit and plan their moves, you can always dodge most things if you are paying attention including Alice, Jack, and many other characters ultimate.

A few can just put it on, and there will be very little counterplay to be done. Imagine Timun losing every time without hitting you even once but getting enough meter to press the ult button and run straight in your direction in circles; there's very little you can do─no matter the outcome you are gonna get hit and lose the point, just for you to beat them again and have to deal with that again once more while your team struggles to win.

Yong Yong and Marina force you to jump potentially onto other enemies behind them if you don't want to get hit, meanwhile you don't have much of a chance to stop them there once they start their move on. Gumi can play the game without hitting a single stack on you with her Light and Heavy Attack but ulting regardless just to push you off the objective, and it will work as it doesn't matter how much resources people use in meaningless ways on you; your teammates will still find a way to lose the game which is the actual frustrating part of it.

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Now, reading all that, you may think, "But isn't that just the problem of being on your team?" My answer is no; it never was. It's true that if they could dodge more things it would be great, but If you can find matches at all, that is way better in my opinion, and I don't blame other people for losing in this. But, what I do blame, however, is the current system in the game. It really lacks options for what you can do, even if you happen to play properly, and there is no game mode that helps besides of course Duels. There's always an limit to be reached every match, even if you can have Rupture running 24/7 together with 6 trophy collector stacks and not losing in neutral once you can still lose the game. They just created game mode after game mode in terrible ways that actively screw the player over. I don't care if someone is playing Briar in competitive and getting folded like an chair every-time, what I do care about is how limiting this feels. It doesn't feel like you are actually in control here, even against bots, no matter how much you play the game.

I'm not saying you should be able to win a team game alone; just that it is not great that people can get free hits for your own win condition of hitting the opponents every time, meanwhile if you try to not take the hits knowing you will get hit-then, your team will just lose and now 2 little fellas will come knocking on your door to push you off the objective and there's nothing you can do, you just cannot hold out in let's say Dominion forever consistently against 2 to 3 people all the time. Even the "bombs" which looked fine when I started are an absolutely menace in Dominion for me who's trying to win right now as it isn't something you can try to dodge constantly while trying to stay on point at the same time, meanwhile if you do dodge it then they still can attack you regardless as it doesn't give you an time in their animation or anything of the like.

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Even mechanics inside those modes are terrible, like how in Deathmatch a single user can lose all of your points even when you try to help them time and time again. You can lose the game without getting hit a single time. Or how Dominion has a "Time's Up" system that is super unsatisfying to deal with and was never improved─I just don't get what the thought was here to put this as the main competitive mode but never ever bother to actually increase the match time in case of an tie. At the bare minimum I would have liked it way more if an Tie where both lost and not won anything could happen in those cases because when the timer runs out─even if you were winning nearly the entire time, there will just be nothing you can actually do.

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Besides all of those things, there are even the bugs in this game. I'm not talking about the server constantly crashing. Way before that, there had always been issues with the general system that were just awful to deal with. Sometimes you can be on top of the Dominion point, for example, and still lose it (somehow). Sometimes the "smash freeze screen" effect of your own hits will allow enemies to escape your own moves because apparently, killing an enemy too early while hitting two people at once is an mistake. Sometimes you can try to go competitive and see the "Ghost Don Quixote" glitch or whatever at the selection screen once an match starts. Other times, moves will somewhat drop when they don't have to or not trigger properly, which would take months to get fixed. I still remember Don Quixote's counter ultimate not countering or parrying at all on the first frames, and Aoi's ultimate slipping past enemies before they added the downward hit onto the ultimate slam move.

What I'm trying to say is that, at best, only Duels feels like a proper game mode for what this game was built from scratch. I think they should have released game modes that actually fit well with the natural core mechanics, especially team ones, as it is frustrating to not even miss a move and still lose the match nonetheless. You are constantly thinking that you could have done better but, even when you do and reduce your mistakes drastically, you can still lose to someone much less experienced than you in a bot match. Any of the ones I have ever seen had this issue except sometimes worse—like how in Deathmatch an single ally can die 7/10 times and lose the match, Solo. You can't "play for someone else", that does not work here and if they want to jump of the ledge 10 times then they absolutely can do it even if you happen to be trying hard to win. The most meta strategy in an bot match against another player in Deathmatch is to focus the bot and murder it10 times to win while ignoring the enemy player as much as you can—hopefully I don't have to explain what the issue is with that?

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Another thing I despise despite liking the game is this problem with the general queue system. It's just brutal if you want to stay in this game for a long time. I am aware that bots are what keep the game alive, but it doesn't even take twenty to thirty seconds in queue before the game auto-fills you with bots if you don't constantly keep cancelling the queue over and over again to find players. Like, I get it, bots are important, but I don't know if I want to get into a match with only bots that many times─·especially that quick and fast. Waiting at least one minute or to a bit over half of it in an empty Queue wouldn't have ruined the game. If there was at least one player on the other side every time and the rest were bots, even if the Queue was overly long, I would understand, but you sort of don't even get the dignity to have that much without having to put in the effort to manually cancel and start the Queue again over and over on casual modes, seriously. Even the competitive queue feels somewhat awful in its own way, being the only place to be guaranteed players and having a general queue open time that closes after a while for some reason. I get it it makes it easier for people to play at that time─·but again, it's the only place with actual players, why are you limiting that and taking that away from others?

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Competitive mode wise—I feel like it had lots of potential, but they screwed it up a lot by making it 3v3. This game clearly never had many players in my experience; clearly, the more players on your team, the more frustrating winning can get. You really don't want to be with random people on your team, which is just a throwback to a better game mode being added for team versions. I'm not saying they should make Duels ranked, as it would generally be terrible, but for obvious reasons, it should have been a Duo mode to take the competitive place. With the current mechanism in the game, it would feel much less miserable to play at times and have to carry one extra person instead of two. Besides, getting into matches would be much quicker than how slow it has always been for me right now, with the extra potential of the queue always being open full time without causing much issues with long Queue times. To make it clear, I don't even like the existing Duo modes currently much less any game mode in this game─I hated all of them, but if I had to choose the most competitive ones it would have had to be Duo ones in this scenario, assuming they couldn't at least improve the time's up mechanic from Dominion given this is an massive dealbreaker to them. Rant's over for now, just a bit upset currently that they didn't really bother to improve it and now the game is dead.

Also, I don't like how the "Mastery" mechanic didn't receive more work. I'm not the type to farm trophies, the ones you can get millions of to appear in the ranking (the previous ones, not the awful new ones). However, I feel like they should have done more with it, like maybe a golden badge near the character portrait during an match, the portraits used near the score at the top of the screen or something similar with your ranking for that character. As it is, I couldn't care less if someone is top 20 or top 1 with Lettuce or whatever other character in the entire world. It only says that you farmed against bots at best; it still won't change the outcome of the match. You won't be able to suddenly dodge everything or be able to attack enemies in a 1v2 and still win all the time. At the bare minimum, it would give way more meaning to farming those things, even more so if getting to the top ranks could award you, like a 5% damage and health stat boost with that character. That is something that wouldn't matter, but I'm sure would make it easier to find people playing the game every day this way trying to achieve that to min-max their gameplay.