Profile of Hannibal

Quality post right there.

Divided on the topic though. I think having 4 factions currently keeps the game alive, because even with only 2-3 maps, you can have at least some variety in gameplay. With only one faction per side and two main strats per faction, variety is very limited even in 3v3/4v4 games. The second factions spices up things a lot.
From what I have read, the balancing isn't an awful lot off. Yes, some broken stuff, but most of what I have read is that all factions are interesting to play and generally well designed. Regarding game design, having four faction from the start will help the overall faction design. Balancing two factions against each other will lead to "overfitting". "Faction A is strong in this phase, therefore B needs this counter earlier and peak afterwards, therefore unit X from faction A needs that buff...". The units will be tuned to fight their counterpart and the special strategy of the opposing faction. This can lead to very cool and interesting gameplay as in CoH1 and CoH2, but both games fucked up the introduction of additional factions. Balance was screwed and suddenly hard to tune because the first factions were meant to fight each other and none of the new factions. CoH3 balances each faction against two others from the start. This should hopefully reduce overfitting and allow easier introduction of new units and factions.

This surely came at the cost of other parts not being finished. I don't think that CoH3 would have been a solid game if it released with two factions and shifted resources elsewhere. There was too much wrong with the game at release, having four factions can't be the cause of these issues.
The post-release drought is a symptom of incompetent Relic leadership. They used their best PR speak to brush over concerns and glaring issues and padded themselves on the back with their store update, non-communication with the community and really embarrassing content like the videos of Steve (forgot the last name) stating how proud he is of the game and its current state. This was a leadership not wanting to accept their failure and trying to hide it.
SEGA or someone even higher at Relic realized and tried to sweep those people out during the layoffs. Which will obviously come with bigger trouble for the organisation and therefore even more breaks. That and the probably still poor planning are reasons why CoH3 hasn't had large content updates up to now. Updates seem to be much more focused though since then. I think the situation overall has improved.

Releasing two additional factions shortly after launch would have helped there to be "some" content for sure. But I don't think it would have been good content. There are to options:
1. They delay the release of two factions to generate some artificially "new" content later on. Release would have had even less content and poorer reviews than it already had.
2. They delay and shift resources elsewhere: Not that easily possible if you plan on a release shortly after launch. Relic cannot hire another audio engineer, because they still need the game designers. This only works if you release the factions a long time down the road as they did with WFA in CoH2. Then you can afford to focus on e.g. audio issues before the game's launch, fire the audio guy/move him to another project and get a gameplay designer for the new content (overly simplified process obviously). But you cannot shift your budget that quickly for 2 months to audio and then shift it back to gameplay design.

Relic bit off more than they could chew, at least with poor leadership and planning. Four factions at release is part of that, but not the main reason why the launch failed so horribly and why the post-launch phase was very underwhelming.

Jesus Christ Donnie...

Coh3 is solid and the 1vs1 really enjoyable once you know to play it. My guess here is many people don't know how to play it and blame it on the game, hiding their lack of skill behind bugs and game issues that are real but not so prevalent. If you don't want to learn the game and expect similitude with coh2 to carry you, you'll evidently be disappointed.

I doubt that's the casePlayers are turned off by many other things, and you can probably sum up most negative reviews with the same 5 bullet points. Relic didn't do much to address those since launch, and won't in the near future either.
But even if we assume that players were just "too dumb" to play the game: That's actually Relic's fault. Relic apparently didn't manage to design the game for their target audience. The system seems to be too dubious and not intuitive, maybe too complicated to learn. If they aimed for a dedicated niche audience that's willing to invest that time and learn it, it would be fine. They didn't. They aimed for and marketed to casual gamers. Those don't want to spend as much time as they'd need to learn 1v1 play style. Relic missed their target audience and programmed the wrong game for them. That's a bad decision from Relic, at least from a business perspective, even if the game under these aspects is good.
But this also raises the next issue: They designed their game for 1v1, but most players and most offered game modes are team games. Which also means they missed their own aims for game design.

I believe you when you say that CoH3 is solid in some aspects and for a specific player base, but it is far from what Relic expected and needed to keep the game healthy.

Apologies. Wouldn't want to degrade the sanctity of this thread...

But point taken

The thread is pretty all over the place already, but another he-said-she-said about another thread doesn't help. These tend to escalate quickly

Vipper and Sky, please take the petty fights to PM.