did the level of play in VCT drop?

title.

i feel like there's been a lot of bad valorant this year so far. is it because the new meta - people are having trouble adjusting? i mean they got like 3 new agents in the game in such a short amount of time and the meta got much more resource heavy

Yes and no I think some teams are clearly better than others but the bottom is bad like worse than t2 teams bad but also it doesn't help they line up days like this where it's just shit games for a day

Bad teams are really bad but it's nothing exceptional (no one even in China is topping 2023 KC levels of bad), I do think some mid table teams actually have trouble adjusting from 2024 though

No

As someone who has been watching since 2020 there have been much worse seasons. We are still not even halfway through the season so it is expected to see some muddy gameplay can’t really judge till we get to the end of the season

Probably something to do with the meta. It's very util heavy meta and slow gameplay. If teams try forcing aggressive gameplay, the util usage makes it look very messy which makes it look like bad gameplay.
Last year, teams could have varying playstyles and they worked because the meta agents could be played differently,