Players are not too dumb to play the game but they are definitively to believe they know the game because they have xK hours on Coh1/Coh2 Franchise and post clueless negative review of it. I read many on Reddit and they're just 2/3 empty of arguments.
You do realize that the overwhelming majority of people who don't like the game aren't posting much about it at all? You reading a few reddit posts is nonsense evidence compared to the insane total drop-off of players coh3 experienced
You don't seem to understand just how bad coh3s playerbase is. It's absolutely dreadful compared to coh2 at this time after release. Which is pretty bad because coh2 was wildly unbalanced in it's early stages
Only points I fully agree against Coh3 atm.
1- lack of maps.
2- Lack of multiplayer ranking assets.
Both of those points effect the playerbase 500% more (and that's a conservative estimate) than what you're talking about. The lack of maps in team games makes things get boring extremely quickly
And you're also oversimplifying those points too. Like community maps are over a year away? That's fucking absurd, most of the best maps in coh2 were community made. That should've been ready shortly after launch
No mention of relic adding a store when the rest of the game doesn't even look finished? I'm also confident that sent more people packing than the difficulty level... Like a lot more people. They were ready to charge money for skins before they were ready to take free work from the community and add it to their game. Gives you a great peek into their priorities