Profile of Hannibal

The thing is that all the core mechanics of CoH revolve around rng. Tanks, Artillery, squad based fights, grenades. There are no laser weapons where it would be believable that a 100% hit rate exists. The authenticity requires hit and miss chances, as well as relatively long reload and cooldown times on guns etc.
Infantry fights are the ones that follow the deterministic concept the most, due to the high sample rate (=shots) that are needed to kill a model. But then again it's purely luck if your all members of squad target a single entity model or if they spread their damage. This could only be circumvented if soldiers could be controlled on a single entity level, which would abolish the squad based fighting tactics, retreating, most of unit preservation and the veterancy core mechanic.
There are some levers to push and a lot has been done, for example spreading out damage profiles of AoE damage, refining squad spacing etc. Also there could be a "manual reload" mechanic for machine guns and so on.

Irrespective of the side you are standing on:
If you want a more star craft-like gameplay, you need to play starcraft. The WW2-time frame does not really allow for a completely deterministic gameplay in my eyes. In my opinion, CoH2 has reached a nice balance between rng and complete mathematical determination for the most part, although in many regards it's far from perfect.
Does the rng make the game require less skill? Well, yes and no, rng can add to the skill ceiling if it is applied in to a limited extent. Yes, as you're sometimes not rewarded, even if you took a fight where you had initial advantage. No, as you are required to reevaluate the engagement at all times. My tank missed twice? -> Abandon the offensive or keep pushing, it's up to you to make a qualified decision.

Their early game performance sucks hard vs OKW, that is the issue with them.

Against OKW I got the problem that usually one Riflemen squad gets chased off the field by Sturmpioneers. So you always have to move two of them around or catch Volks in 1v1 to not lose the early game. Which is difficult of course, but that's not a problem with Riflemen, but Sturmpioneer start

On the forums, many seem to have a "Riflemen are bad and cost inefficient" attitude that I do not share. Maybe it is due to my probably relatively low player rank and the different meta that is played there compared to high rank matchups, but still I don't get why they are shittalked like that, since also in high skill play, many fights are just stand offs of squads shooting each other, which is purely rng.

Compared to Volks, Riflemen are about 10 % more expensive, but at least judging from my game play experience I'd say that they also perform at least 10 % better. In my eyes they trade reasonable well at least until Volks are upgraded. And even after that they don't get completely wreched by them. Against grenadiers, they usually win even if they lose a model while closing in.
They're 5 men, so reasonably beefy and resilient to rng wipes, have high mobility and decent stock firepower.
There are some drawbacks, such as the need to sidetech for grenades and weapon upgrades, as well as the vet1 requirement for snares that sometimes comes in too late to deter light vehicles, but in most of the games their firepower is good enough to get a tank first before side-teching. Then you can put 1-2 BARs on them which gives them good firepower, or you have the slightly off-meta possibility to give them bazookas and use them as an AT squad with five men to endure some tank shots and the potential to snare afterwards.

On a faction scale, USF has always been on the strong infantry side, which is partially caused by the "free" officer squad for teching, but also Riflemen do play a strong role in there as Riflemen have been the only infantry option for USF for very long.

So, why all the hate for Riflemen?

I'm probably late with suggestions, but had it been considered to nerf the arch when in canister shot mode?
As far as I could see it, the problem was people spamming 2-3 of these and annihilating charging infantry. A smaller arch makes it easier to just run through it quickly and dodge the damage, while it would reward good micro and a good setup for defensive positions

And fun fact:
There is one stock infantry that rips and shreds easily retreating units, because it got bonus accuracy against them - that infantry doesn't belong to allies.

Wait what? Which one?