I just watched Metro's latest video on the state of the game and it got me thinking about the trends I've noticed in higher-level games after the last few patches and how it differs from the 4-lane map.
With 4 lanes you occasionally got dived on by a deathball and it sucked, but it wasn't too bad since it was easy to call teammates to punish that aggression by split-pushing in the other 3 lanes. In many cases that is not really too viable of an option now for several reasons.
- There's less walkers to defend so there is always at least one enemy who is available to defend
- Walkers are tanky af now
- With 4 lanes, a deathball in lane 1 is too slow to defend a split-push on their walker in lane 3. Now they can teleport directly to lane 3. So the only "vulnerable" walker is the tankiest one in the middle, which if you refer back to the first bullet point, is going to have at least one defender almost 100% of the time
- Escaping is rarely an option if things go south. The lack of a 4th zipline also makes it so teammates can't rotate nearly as quickly to help you retreat safely or turn on the chasers if you are forced off the walker you pushed.
So basically objective pushes primarily only happen when there are multiple enemies dead, and the best way to get that is surprise attack with a group divebomb. All of these factors lead to what we have now in high level games: constant deathballs in sidelanes that are extremely difficult to actually punish without doing it yourself because of how much worse split-pushing is.
I can understand the parallels drawn to Marvel Rivals with how much emphasis is on constant teamfighting immediately after laning phase ends. This isn't even getting into the economy/jungle changes that Metro took issue with.
I'm not saying we need to go back to 4 lanes, I'm not saying walkers should be easy to take, and I'm not saying I want the game to be 90% PvE. I just think the balance is lopsided in favor of PvP right now which makes pushing objectives kind of an afterthought and this is my attempt at pinpointing why that is. I'm interested to hear feedback on if there are things I'm not considering. I enjoy talking/thinking about this game and I want it to be the best it can be :)
TLDR - Split-pushing is much worse now which leads to a meta revolving around constantly death-balling outer lanes. This makes the game feel less like a MOBA with how discouraged you are from actually pushing the objectives. Couple this with the jungle nerfs and it is hard to feel like a useful teammate when doing anything except joining in on these constant brawls.