I can't agree with you: last few days I can see a number of players is about 4 000. And DLC with a new fractions may be offers like a new part of game, so it may has reclame-company. If you can offer the best deal, please express it.
In my opinion, Relic has taken a path in it's business model which doesn't aggressively encourage new players to buy the game.
Adding DLC only serves purpose to the players who already own the game. But in the eyes of the new player, it may infact have the opposite effect given if the game has insane amounts of expensive DLC critical to multiplayer experience.
In my eyes the business model which Relic has driven since the release is flawed. Both in the sense of profit and gaming experience. What Relic could have done first is to add features that encourage new players and create publicity. Features like leaderboards, observermode and advanced replay system would encourage more players to stream events and create tournaments. First build up a solid, loyal fanbase and then offer the treats. These generate publicity for the game and would harvest new players aswell. The DLC should have been only skins and coop/singleplayer missions at first, since those are not messing around with balance.
If commanders were not monetized right off the bat the existing ones could have been edited freely, abilities switched around or reworked completely. Now we have a bunch of DLC commanders, some of which are more useful than the others, but you can't rework them because some people have bought them. In my opinion, the new commanders (last couple of patches) should've been there since the beginning for free because I personally believe they reflect the uniqueness more than the old ones.
New DLC commanders should've been cheap and rather rare luxury and even then bundled up. Now new commanders are being introduced before the metagame even settles. It offers variety for sure, but I'd rather take a balanced, stable, enjoyable, deep core gameplay before adding more variety to it. The variety should come from the core first, and from the expansions later.