The pace of the game feels forcefully driven by neutral item drops than it is by actual players doing stuff like outplays, or forcing favorable fights and taking objectives.

The pace of the game is currently too fast. And it feels bad due to the neutral items than for any other reason in my opinion..

Matches seems to end at the point where the team that's ahead gets a tier of neutral items above after taking outpost in jungle and they just push.. It's a grossly simplified take and likely wrong, but that's just how every one of my matches feels right now. That and early game stomps that end in afk quick end for either team..

Neutral items force matches to end early by providing far too much free stats and sometimes completely break entire builds or team comps with their actives.. especially if you happen to get free dispels or that item with extra building dmg on tiny or LD..

it feels meh when you get a good roll and u win, while it's absolutely terrible when the enemy gets the exact one they need and you get rolled over in fights. The only time it feels fair is when either teams don't get any impactful neutrals. The game then feels like normal dota rather than an Artifact RNG moment.

Also, in complete stomps, it feels as though the enemy can stand in fountain and never die while you get farmed. Heroes at a certain point just feel like they're insanely tanky to everything on the map and can only die by overextending horribly..

My suggestion would be to :-

either Nerf tier 1 to tier 4 neutrals by minimum 60% and make tier5s drop even later..

OR

remove all neutrals entirely. This way I don't have to bother playing with another menu and I can focus on playing the game.

OR

Give every single neutral item a Negative. Like the minus damage you get from holding the gpm item, or minus Armor from holding the ghost shroud item.