Hans doesn't deserve to be namedropped here at all, I'm sure any of his viewers or fellow subs here will agree with me. Yes he got angry on stream once, but this sort of thing happens to the entire RTS community unless you are the Dude from The Big Lebowski. You have a bad day and the game throws up some stupid RNG or an idiotic teammate, so you get frustrated... BIG DEAL!
He is one of the few European streamers that actually cares about the CoH2 community. He doesn't deserve being attacked like this.
It doesn't happen only in RTS games, happens everywhere when your teammates refuse to cooperate. RNG is A LOT different story. Still, i never question Hans' ability as a player, but no matter how good an individual is, no matter how many good things he will do, a single mistake can ruin everything (in terms of what people will remember later)
Just wondering, wouldn't a percentile system make a bit more sense. For example rank 200 Ost is not the same as 200 Brit as there are significantly less ranked Brit players. I think in CoH3 a percentile ranking should be used to give a better sense of player skill/rank.
The Matchmaker is NOT matching by ranks but instead by a hidden ELO rating (check out this post if you are interested in the details).
As it is "hidden" we can't really check how ELOs are distributed for each faction/game modes across ranks. That said, my best guess is that it is to some extend similar to a percentile ranking, although there will be certainly rank ranges where different factions do not match up well...
As Jae said, any deviation from a 50% winrate should have nothing to do with balance but rather with how matchmaking works, as long as you are not looking at the very best or worst players.
This is just one of the reasons why balance is in the focus at the top level. Still, I'd also say that balance at mid-levels should be okish, for a couple of reasons:
The game being balances across vast skill ranges should make it easier for the matchmaker to find proper matches.
Balance becomes relevant when playing without the matchmaker, that is, in tournament or simply a custom game vs. friends.
It overall leads to a less frustrating game experience if e.g. an well organized and thought out push requires an equally well organized and well managed defense to be stopped, not a simple click-this-button ability.
Furthermore, several points in the past patches were not trying to improve "balance" but rather "gameplay"...
So, yeah, I think balancing at the top is most important, but ideally it should be balanced across all skill ranges, fully knowing that it will be impossible to achieve that, more so across all different game modes and matchups...