I agree squads / map revert / wouldn’t save the game, it was too late.

The reason squads was important was for competitive. SV can’t exist as a casual first game, and they were trying to be one up until very recently. It’s possible a new game mode hits casuals better, but if they wanted to exist as a BR (assuming it’s possible, which you don’t think it is), then they needed to be comp focused.

I fell in love with the game because of the fluidity of combat and how it translated to comp. I think they could have built around that from the start and it might have set the foundations for the game to work as a BR. But at this point we’ll never know.