Nobody is saying riflemen are 'unplayable' across all levels btw. I am sure they can be viable at the lower ELO. But I am kindly asking anyone who defends riflemen and whines about pahtfinders to please use rifles in 2v2-4v4 against a top 100 player with 60+% winrate that spams lmg grens, volks, obers, JLI (or literally any axis mainline) with double HMG. And then upload the replay and tell us how much fun you had and how successful it was
And you know something about it since yourself trashtalk people not following the only one path meta.
Anyway even if in 1vs1 rilfemen are ok, the rest of the faction doesn't follow and make USF terribly hard to play at equal level with their opponent. USF lacks of shock units and punishing tools when your opponent makes a mistake and if you don't have a RNG moment to help you, you'll basically slowly lose to your opponent by attrition.