Either "it was never balanced this way" or "they made an attempt", you can not have both thing happen at same.
An attempt was made.
It was not balanced.
Which part is so tremendously hard and painful to understand for you?
I can prepare diagram in Paint to help you if words are not enough.
Mainline infantries balance was not a massive fail, actually most of the mainlines infantries remained the same for years with little problems one vs other (other than existence of shreck on VG). What was actually a massive fail was the JUNE 21st Penals coming with flamer and ourah.
You can't predict meta.
You can't predict how units will be used.
You can make assumptions and set goals for balance but if players do not use it in intended way and it under/over performs, you're back to drawing board and its getting further changes.
Unit didn't worked as cons on crack, because it invalidated existence of cons and their upgrades.
Again, not a hard concept.
I have to remind you this over and over again but I am not the topic of this thread, PLS stop obsessing with what I do or do not do.
The claim that the system was abandoned quickly is simply untrue.
The balance system of mainline infantries fighting each other worked fine from October of 2014-June 2016. Keep in mind that during that time the lead designers also changed. The system was not even abandoned, patch started moving away from these guidlines mostly from June 21, when other people took the lead.
Reasons are irrelevant.
It did not worked and had to be changed, period. Nothing more, nothing less.
Not only you can group weapon but it was actually done by Relic.
Yeah, grat example of that would be con rifles, gren rifles, tommies rifles and osttruppen rifles, all working in completely different way with completely different profiles and dps curves.
Yeah... no.
Pls do not tell me what to do if you want something ask nicely.
Feel free to go for the argument instead of the way its presented.
I'm not complaining that half of each post you make are unnecessary words with a goal to divert attention of discussed issue and focus on something you personally think is bad.
No they did not and they where proven to be monstrosities on the 27 June patch and they had to be nerfed in nearly every patch since then. I wonder if one the pre 27 June patch Penals would not prove to be more cost efficient AI than the current ones.
You are confusing(yet another time) units design with units balance.
Was units design changed since that iteration?
No, its still "soviet rifles" with long range and good offensive scaling. CQC version would never survived in design due to con and shock overlap always making at least one in that trio obsolets, so penals had to take on unique role in soviet army.
Everything that happened to the unit between that patch and now is just a balance, design, again, was completely unchanged and penals perform the exact same role as back then, with long range soviet non doctrinal infantry with dps scaling instead of durability one.