oh god, I can see it happening all over again, some "top" players heavily influencing balance like it happened with coh2...
Yea that didn't happen. The first years of COH2 Relic didn't like what the top players had to say so we were pretty much ignored and silenced. That's why 90% of top players from COH1 did not move to COH2 for very long, the downgrade in mechanics and initial pay2win strategy was too much.
Relic didn't actually start listening until years after release when they realized they had F'd up. Even then the cycling of "experts" in their group was alarming. They'd bring in a new group for "private balancing" and if they didn't agree with the devs eventually they'd be phased out and a new group of "experts" brought in. Span this over years and hundreds of players. Most top players ran out of fucks to give for COH2 after enough of that.
Lets hope lessons were learned on both sides.