I'm just going to address a couple of OP's points - (1) most people were happy with Frontlines and could have fun with it"- highly subjective, I could point to quite a few people who weren't happy with the prior iteration for quite a few reasons. In any case, there were good points with the prior version, but I could point to a very, very long list of improvements that could have been made.

(2) Your concluding that"a lot of the most enthusiastic FL players play to challenge themselves to either do a very high amount of damage or rack a maximum of kills. When you nerf the individual impact of players, you create a very casual pvp audience and NA data centers certainly don't need more people who are "only here for their quick xp regardless of the outcome of the match". " OK, who doesn't want to rack up kills? However how do you conclude that the changes to FL are going to lead to people going to the complete oppposte end of the spectrum, "just here for XP" mindset? If someone is just there for the ultra-high dopamine rush, why would they even be doing FL in the first place- I'm asking honestly- it wouldn't the game I would seek out for PvP. I don't see it happening.