I took nearly a year long break from this game and just came back. Not really caught up on any of the drama going on but thought I would give a couple thoughts since I have over 1k hours in the game and was surprised about a few things on return.
I was never the best player, but to give context to my skill level, when I was playing consistently, I would be playing solo 10 diff the majority of the time on all factions. I prefer bots>bugs>illuminate, but I played all 3 because sometimes you just want to change things up. Now, onto a few thoughts:
Literally the first game I played after about 9 months off I died multiple times to day 1 bugs. (Day 1 meaning bugs that have been in the game since release and still haven't been fixed) I died to an invisible hitbox from a destroyed robot (The hulk was on the ground dead and I shot an explosive arrow over it but it blew up from hitting an invisible hitbox from the dead enemy), and I died to Terminids falling through the ground so I couldn't see them when they attacked me. (I saved the clip and the only things visible was the top of their claws moving up out of the ground as they were moving towards me)
I know when I was playing one of the bigger complains from people who played every day was raising the medal limit because 250 is insanely low. I never saw an issue with players having a higher medal cap and being rewarded for playing the game more. Them having access to entire warbonds on release feels like a solid reward for consistent play rather than limiting medals and making progress feel restricted to a few hours after warbonds release. I don't know if sentiment has changed since I played but I was surprised they hadn't made that change already.
On a positive note, I've caught up with a few warbonds now and some of the newer strats/weapons are pretty damn cool. I especially like the warp pack, the c4 pack, breaching hammer, AR-2 Coyote, Speargun, expendable napalm, and the DE-ESCALATOR. I haven't gone through everything but those stand out as things I would consistently see myself using depending on the faction I'm up against.
I still feel like some of the primaries are just there to fill space on warbonds. There's a few weapons that I used once to try out and will never touch again unless they buff them or make them more viable against certain factions. That makes me pretty damn sad because I love trying different loadouts based on which factions I'm against, but to have it limited because so many weapons feel horrible to play with just feels like bad balancing.
I'll end with this - It's always been my understanding that this was a horde shooter grunt fantasy game. The main reason I quit playing was because the devs had consistently been making changes that made a PvE game feel less fun to play. And like any reasonable person, once I stopped enjoying it as much, I just dropped it and picked up other stuff. Lately I've been wanting to return and so when I picked it back up, I was really hoping some changes had been implemented that brought back that chaotic but amazing feeling I had after release, but it still seems plagued by a lot of stuff that led to me leave in the first place. After taking such a long break, I'm enjoying the game again, but I know that without some balance changes to primaries or more meaningful progression systems, I'll inevitably leave again because it just feels the devs haven't listened to players for years now. Anyways, I don't expect this to get much traction, but I thought I'd give thoughts after taking so long off.