Depends on what you mean by balance, tweaking numbers and what not is quite easy and Relic has more than enough staff and testers on hand to release more frequent balance patches. If your talking about removing things or adding things to the game then yes obviously that requires more work and more testing, but you don't need to add or subtract units and abilities in order to make the game more balanced.
For example, lets say Unit X is OP, it does to much damage to fast. You could either A. lower it's damage or B. Lower it's ROF. Both of those things do not require you to add or subtract units from the game.
A patch every month is beyond pathetic for an active RTS, especially when the things we are getting in the patches are basically number changes and bug fixes that we shouldn't need to wait months for. The backbone of any good developer is a critical community, a hug box won't get you anywhere.
EDIT: And when I said "Boy who cried wolf" Relic has been excited about "new" features for months now so you can understand why people are skeptical.
Yeah, i kind of get the last part, but Relic cant do shit about it! Sega is stopping them with their stupid NDA´s :/ As a developer i would love to tell my fans about the stuff i am working on
And the Balance thing:
What you are saying is exactly the problem. People think it is just some number tweaking.
First of all, Relic and CoH2 is at the moment not making enough money so they can just keep a huge army of balancers working on just that. I would be suprised if more than 5-6 people top are working on it ( it does not generate money, and as a company the leadership does not give a fuck about our gaming experience ).
Secondly, tweaking numbers aint that easy. lets say you lower the damage on the said unit. How does that impact the whole faction? Does the said faction now have a good enough lategame infantry? What other units need to be ajusted, just because you have weakened that one unit?
Example, a lot of people are saying that OKW Volksgrenadiers should loose their shreks. How would that impact the game if Relic would have reacted on the uberblobbingmeta we have right now by just removing them? Okw would have been killed by tanks way too early. Stuff like that takes time. If u weaken one unit, you have to think in a bigger picture. They probably spent a lot of time just calculating stuff, then tweak the numbers, then try it out, change the stats again a little, check again and so on.
I imagine it to be a lot of work. When it only was Sovjets vs Wehr it was a lot easier. Now you have 4 factions which have to be balanced correctly!
I feel sad for Relics employees. They want to do all the stuff we ask for, i am sure of it, but money, chefs, and NDA´s make it impossible. Having a community that then blames them for, yeah, kind of everything that annoys them ( even if it isnt Relics fault ), must really hurt. People usually take pride in their work, and seeing people hate your work sucks and demotivates, especially if it isnt your fault!
So please give them a break, give them some time! Games have changed, we dont get 1 big finished game, like 10 years ago. Now we get games that they keep working on, and i like it that way, but that means that it takes time. Give it to them. They are good people at heart