With the sent rework changes, survivors have lost their neuro immunity and their super bones, meaning they’re weaker than they had ever been before. If you do not play survivor, you might not know what the meta was for a while when they gave surv extra endurance. The meta was to run around and stay on the move, scavenging and hoping that the robust xeno players were feeling brain dead and died easily to you. Generally speaking, you didn’t hunker down behind cades except in certain maps and circumstances.
This was pretty unpopular to say the least with a lot of people, especially xeno players. However, allow me to explain why this meta evolved. Survivor has gone through a number of meta shifts, but the one before the “protagonist” meta, you had the death meta. The death meta arrived with scatter sent, and sents in general, being able to effortlessly perma sleep you. This was compounded by the massive defensive nerfs to both cades and walls. Cades being made into paper, and every t2 (and half the t1s) able to break open walls. The death meta essentially killed the survivor role, and very few people continued to play it despite it having been a very popular and enjoyed role beforehand. Due to what amounts to the murder of a role, a compromise was made which gave survs the ability to not have their bones broken instantly and to have immunity to sents. Due to the aforementioned cade and wall nerfs, it made your survival chances actually improve in most circumstances by not cading and instead roaming. Thus, the protagonist meta was born.
Now, let us take stock of the situation. The survivors no longer have immunity or bone break resistance, they do not have cades as they did before, nor do they have walls. The only proposed change is to give them armor around the map, but that fundamentally misunderstands survivor combat. You primarily fight t1s (runners/sents) and t2s (lurkers/warriors.) Speed here is key, you have at most 2 minutes to grab all your gear, find a place, and get set up. God forbid you get a larva rusher. If you have to wear armor that dramatically slows you down, and if you’re carrying it, it takes up a hand slot that could be used to carry gear. Essentially, you have given survivors an impossible choice of: Die to a runner, Die to a sent and a runner, die to a sent. This doesn’t include the self root for a few seconds to put the armor on. By the point you run into a sent or a runner, it’s probably too late. You will get blasted with neuro or you will get pounced. If you wear the armor, you are incredibly easy to pounce for a runner, and still incredibly easy to slow as a sent, making it even easy for runners.
To sum it up, the recent survivor nerfs have not given the role any kind of compensation. The role is weaker than it ever has been, and it’s basically back to an unplayable state. You are a free capture for any sent player, your cades are worthless, and you can’t even use walls to defend you. The proposed compensation changes aren’t fitting with survivor gameplay. To those who say “survivors shouldn’t be protags” I agree, but look to why they became them. The underlying issues are not fixed, it’s impossible in most circumstances to hold cades. You can’t build walls instead, and now if you try to roam you will just get sent neuroed and killed.
The dev team should work to fix the underlying issues of survivor gameplay, not just make bandaid fixes thst won’t change anything meaningfully. The issues are the lack of any prep time(new surv players get crushed even worse btw), lack of any meaningful defensive options, and the sent hell that’s returned.