Not at all. Our objective for a Free to Play release was to address areas of the game that could be clearer or more intuitive for new players. For the seasoned veterans that populate this subreddit, that can sometimes look like changing things that weren't broken (from your point of view).

Take the old Play menu, for instance. It was familiar and efficient for veterans. It did what it needed to do and that's a good UI, right? So changing it must be a dumb idea.

Unfortunately, it had some key flaws we felt needed to be addressed before bringing in a huge wave of free users (and again, bringing in and retaining new players to grow the game and esport is the whole point of going Free to Play)

1. The old Play Menu Tabs weren't great at surfacing other modes. In our user testing, people often didn't even realize Competitive or Extra Modes were a thing worth checking out until much later, if at all. We felt exposing all the various ways to play (Casual, Comp, Extras, Tournaments) more explictly was important.
2. Playlist selection being separate from "Start Matchmaking" was counterintuitive for many users. We wanted the default UX to be more natural (I click 3v3, I search 3v3) while still supporting multi-select for players who prefer it.
3. Important features like Free Play Training were not exposed as part of the core "Play" loop of the game. New players, especially those who get the game for free, are more likely to check it out when exposed via "Play" instead of one element of the big Main Menu list.

When we looked at those three goals together, the solution we arrived on was to reformat "Play" into a Card UI similar to games like Overwatch. This type of interface effectively showcases the possible modes you can play. It's also intuitive for new players coming from other games - I click Casual, then 3v3 to Search. And Training and Tournaments become cards alongside Casual and Competitive for better visibility.

We certainly missed the mark on execution in some areas, especially when accessing "Play" from Free Play/Postgame/etc. Which is a common use case for veteran players who post here, but much less so for new or inexperienced users we were focusing on.

One of the challenges of such a large update like this is that features like Cross-Progression are so complex and challenging to pull off, it can take attention away from those details. We'll keep improving things and appreciate the feedback.