No one on in this community mod team, or Relic (whatever remains of Relic) has the big picture vision to understand asymmetric balance and strategic, vs, by-the-numbers, unit-vs-unit balance.
100 % agree.
I have played coh2 from its release to now, and I played coh1 for 3 - 4 years before that. From my perspective as a 1v1 player (who exclusively plays OSt & Usf) I would say the game is now beyond saving due to community patching philosophy. Every faction now is almost identical and plays the same way unless you include a few meme strats like ostruppen etc. The other problem is the game has become dull as fuck, because every faction just builds a defensive wall of mgs and double at guns and the game just degenerates into each side probing until the other player gets caught out of position or rng determines a wipe. Then indirect fire just shits all over everything and often makes unit positioning a pointless exercise because often the first strike wipes half the squad and half its health meaning auto retreat.
The problem stems from trying to make every unit and every game mode viable which like it or not pushes the game towards mirror factions. Once everyone starts build double mgs and defensive lines then the game just becomes a slugfest of boredom.
The other issue is the balance team gave into every fanboy that cried about not having the same "tools" as other factions, eg suppression, cq units etc etc. Once upon a time if you wanted to play a particular style you would pick the faction that favored that style. Now everything is just the mirror image with each side having it own flavor of cancer.
IMO I find the problem so bad that I don't even find watching the game interesting unless its a tournament semi final and even then I am more entertained by AE casting than actual gameplay.
This is not a balance issue for me, rather just disappointment with the direction the game has taken and really just how extremely frustrating the game is to play now.