While I agree its not all about the top players, there needs to be a line drawn for the bottom of the barrel players too.
Should we neuter all off-maps into impotent abilities, because they will not dodge it?
Should increase grenade throwing animation length and fuse timer, because they can't see it?
Should we lower costs of units, because they will just keep losing them and having to rebuild?
Balance should not be made for top 10 players, but it also should not cater to rank 5000 4v4 blobber who can't dodge longest off-maps or make simplest of decisions about not frontally attacking something that hardcounters him.
I would say that the player numbers being as low as they are points to some fundamental problem with the game.
The issues I can see are the following:
- Relic didn't settle on an audience to cater for (single player, co-op players, pvp players etc.) and delivered a half arsed product for all those audience, i.e. they developed a game that needed 30 million USD of budget but only had 10 million USD;
- The gameplay is too similar to CoH1 and CoH2 - those games offer a more mature offering;
- Content is lacking - not enough maps for starters and weak mod support; and
- The team game format does not give a good team play experience - 3v3 and 4v4 tends to devolve into multiple 1v1s with no natural co-operation or teamwork taking place.