DB simply isn’t how I used to like it. I’m not talking about the server changes, even though that too has changed the way I played the game. Since the server list was crippled, I’ve stopped bothering with missions, and I’ve been playing stopwatch exclusively. So here half of the game is already gone for me.
But no, I’m talking about how the game changed from a mission-based one, like Enemy Territory was, to a Counter Strike (and yeah I know CS is mission-based, but when you watch a CS match, you quickly understand that the bomb isn’t at all what the game is about). I don’t know what happened for all those CS players to arrive in the game, but now in way too many matches I’m just gun meat for other players.
In the past that happened a lot because the anticheat sucked, now it’s different, but in fact… does it really matter? Does it really matter if you get instakilled at every corner because of a cheater, or a good player?
I’m 40, I’m too old to aim properly. It’s just the way it is, reflexes go, aiming well isn’t something you can keep over time, just like you don’t see people in their 40’s breaking 100m records. Not many sports leave a chance to “old” people.
…which is why I play this kind of game. They’re normally not just about aiming. But now that has changed, I could make my way to objs way easier in the past. Now there are just too many instakillers. You pop your head, you get all of the shots at once, you’re dead. Like every server was a laggy one now. There was only 1 merc I was scared of in the game, that cheat piece that Fletcher was.
I miss Enemy Territory time when a duel was lasting several seconds. Several seconds of strafing, half of the duel was a strategy. Even fleeing when it was going wrong for you. The only way you’d be instakilled at those times, was by snipers (who were already a nuisance) or airstrikes, but that was in the open. Now, just like in CS, it’s like pretty much every gun instakills.
The first kick in the nuts was when my beloved proxy got crippled. Proxy was THE merc for bad-aimers like me. It was all about strategy. Now, don’t bother mining healing stations anymore, the enemy just has to shoot the mine. And don’t bother mining at all, the enemy will use your mines to kill your teammates now. Great. A bad (or troll) proxy can now block paths for his own team. The 2 mercs I never change are Proxy & Aura. As both, I should be glad that Proxy isn’t a threat to Aura anymore, but I’m not. Mining healing stations was a good thing.
And when there’s finally a weapon for me in the game, the rocket launcher, it gets crippled. It was fine, it required a little strategy, pre-firing before showing yourself, aiming at the ground or walls. It was well balanced IMHO, quite often I was dying because my rocket was shot as I was shooting it. But now way too often a merc survives it… and sadly it’s those mercs that those asshole instakillers generally pick (the ones that aren’t sniping from far, that is), that I finally had a merc to counter 
Why freak out for Javelin, while you’re getting instakilled all the time from miles away by… yeah, even by medics! At least Javelin announces it.
What’s even worse, those instakillers aren’t necessarily making their team win. I’ve seen many teams filled with them fail, because none of them had a supporting merc. But they -don’t care-, they’re there for frags only. Just for that K/D ratio that you only see in the final scoreboard.
I’m suspecting that this is simply the result of the execution mode being gone, is that possible?
I casually played execution, and quickly understood that it wasn’t for me, that it was another CS. And I was very bad at it. But now it’s the whole game that’s like that… stopwatch being polluted with execution players. Or it’s because it’s not the same kind of players who now play stopwatch? I won’t play casual, there’s already too much waiting in this game. And if the whole server lists ever disappears, I’m done playing this game anyway. Precounts before warming up for another precount before the map’s intro, that was already annoying enough. No way you can play casual without a smartphone to do something else while waiting.
I wish this game the success/playerbase of CS, though. But as a new player, one would be a masochist to start playing CS.
