So, i got over 800 hours in the game, play it regularly and even play in a VRML league team in this game, so why on earth would i give this game a negative review? For several reasons actually, let me list them for you


There are MANY bugs in this game, you probably don't noticed them if you don't play it competitively, but they are there, for years actually, and until now nobody bothered to fix them, the devs know about these issues for a long time now but refuse to do anything, either because of possible backlash of the average player or the incompetence of not being able to fix them.
What are these bugs i am talking about, the most noticeable are: Bullets sometimes don't hit the enemy, Knifes sometimes don't hit the enemy, flash-bangs sometimes flash through walls, flash-bangs sometimes don't flash even if they are in direct line of sight, you can boost yourself off edges at high speeds. These are just a few and the most important ones being in the game for a long time now


This could be in point one, but since it's so dominant in the game, it deserves its own point. Ping and packet loss plays a major role in the game, just doing something as simple as playing back a 4k youtube video in the background can give you much increased survivability due to the bullets not being as likely to hit you, i found that the sweet-spot you want to have is around 110-120 ping, preferably with a small to mid amount of packet loss, if you manage to get the value just right, and you do the "chicken dance" (Walking from left to right to left while shooting) makes you almost impossible to kill


As mentioned in point one, the devs don't really listen much to the feedback of the competitive community, talking normally to them doesn't do anything and speaking in a more dominant tone or calling devs out gets you banned on their channels (official Pavlov discord and Steam community) I don't know why the devs won't listen to the most experienced players of the game (league players), but they keep being stubborn and continue to do their thing


It's not rare to see hotfixes or bugfixes to bugs or problems which previously worked, Pavlov TV is a great example of that. A new update comes out, PavTV stops working, devs fixes the issue after a few month, new update comes out, PavTV stops working again. This has been going on forever, besides that new updates launch with content missing or things not working while devs know about these issue during development, and not fixing them bevore the update comes live, speaking of updates, lets go over to point 5


The updates, one of my most hated things about the game, even with a fast internet connection and the game being installed on a SSD, updates still take forever, if your connection is fast enough, and you don't have many community maps installed, completely uninstalling the game and reinstalling it might be the faster alternative, switching between stable builds and beta builds is absolute hell


So, after all these negative things, am i still going to play Pavlov? Yes, i probably will, not because i support the game, or because i enjoy playing it competitively, the only reason is because its a decent game when played casually and it's the only game of it's kind, i am not happy about this, and i really hope these issues are getting addressed, i am well aware that this probably won't happen, but hope never dies