I see nothing wrong with the commanders conceptually. Yes, they are drastic in a way that literally changes the way the faction is played if you choose a specific doctrine.
GOOD. If its balanced what the hell is the problem? It makes potential gameplay more dynamic. I haven't used the new commanders, but I played against the two paid german ones last night, and both games were pretty awesome. The doctrines all have their weaknesses, and if those aren't exploitable enough at the moment, then a balance change will be in order.
I don't understand the ranting about the concepts. The vetting plays out really interesting. You end up fighting a much smaller force of elite troops, if your opponent is spamming the ability, and then maybe one vet 2 p4. Given other vetting changes, your pumped-up squads will actually help to vet your opponent when they die.
The quick vehicle ability that russia gets entirely retools their army. You don't get shocks or guards, and you have a restricted manpower income. So you get a 5 minute t70. counters already exist at that point in the game, and you are going to be sorely lacking in infantry support as the russian commander,for the whole game.
For a while I was concerned about there being less standard teching options, but I don't think the doctrinal system being the place where you are given flexibility is a bad system. In vcoh you had more unit options that you could combine with 3 different doctrines to different effect. In coh2, russia has more units than america did, though less teching options, and you can combine those 14 units in different ways with many more than 3 doctrines, to greatly expand the way a faction can be played.
So what is the reasoning for disallowing them from Sunday Night Fights? That they haven't been properly balanced at this time, or that you have made a decision about what the "legitimate" gameplay parameters are?
Do you know why Relic changed doctrine system in COH2 compared to COH1?
1) To let them be less prominent and influence the game less than how they did in COH1 because they thought they were too important for players
2) To make them easier to sell.
(And Quinn Duffy told me this at Eurogamer Expo, face to face in RL)
From Case Blue they started to create doctrines with a much higher impact on gameplay, to a point where now they heavily alterate your whole way to play a faction. It is conceptually wrong for three reasons:
A) The first one is that it goes against 1) with the only purpose of enforcing 2). Basically you increase their desireability by making them impact more on gameplay. Which has a lot of sense in terms of marketing, but which is conceptually wrong because it goes all against the design guidelines Relic followed to make COH1. (and COH2 is its successor, not the successor of League of Legends).
The second reason is that a huge amount of abilities/weapons that are in doctrines are just stuff that should have been part of the game (forward HQ, G34s, tank traps and so on) and that instead is all doctrinal.
The third reason is that it fucks up entirely balance because it heavily alterate units effectiveness and timing of the normal factions, it alterates the already bad resource system, it makes useless having spent so much time balancing units till now.
The game doesn't get more fun if you keep adding variables to a point they are so many that you cannot balance them. The game doesn't get more fun if you drastically change the core gameplay features that led us to play COH at first istance. COH1 is fun for a reason, because it's a very good and balanced game with the few doctrines and elements it has. And the balance is good at all stages, from low level players to top level players, from 1vs1 to 4vs4 (where it's still decent compared to COH2).