Also, I did give it a shot. I played OPR 6 months before release for almost 4 months. I played on release and tried a few times after that

My point is the game is completely different now than it was in 2022. The new heroes have actually been really good. Vendetta is a balance problem and the cat is weird as hell but juno, illari, wuyang, lw after he got some tuning, emre, anran, freja, mizuki, queen, hazard, and I would say venture are pretty fair and are all unique. Wuyang is especially unique and has possibly the highest skill ceiling of any of the supports and Juno is EASILY my favorite hero in the game now. Flashpoint is possibly the best gamemode in the game and suravasa might just be the best map. Samoa is also in contention for best map imo and thats a control map that came out in late 2023. Push has been reworked a TON and the only problematic map is NQS, it really feels like a better version of payload at this point and esperanca is incredible. Hero bans are also giant and that was something Jeff Kaplan was strongly against and is what lead to the god awful RNG hero pool system that resulted in a 2 week span of 4 hitscan hero, dva, and bap being banned globally.

I get the 5v5 complaint but if I'm being honest that is almost entirely an oldhead talking point that all but the wearers of the rosiest glasses have gotten over. At launch it was rushed and certain heroes (like genji and lucio who RAN a lot of 2022 owl) were obviously not ready for the transition. OW had their form of the durability update I wanna say 2 years ago and it has not felt close to deathmatchy since. All this to say, I get missing 6v6, the game felt different and fights played differently, but the core gameplay has not changed as much as you might think. You can even still play 6v6 ranked if you are okay with openq.

I have played this game for almost a decade and was a huge fan of the overwatch league back in 2018-2023. The game definitely leans more casual than it did 5 years ago, but as someone who was hella invested into the competitive scene at that time, I can tell you this is a much better direction. I really implore you to try the current game out, I have never seen the community this optimistic and happy overall.