I've never been a programmer, but the sad truth is that network code on this level is notoriously difficult. It's easy to think that it should be easier today than a few years ago, since the net is more evolved, but it seems to be the opposite. That's why we see less people per game than in previous ones. As you say, balancing is an enormous task. One little change can affect weeks of work and disrupt other parts of the game. (I actually designed the "flagship" multiplayer level in Far Cry 3, my last AAA-effort before moving into producing. And if you think FPSs are hard to balance... you can't imagine what it was like on an RTS of yore!) As a producer, I've had to lead the effort to find solutions to network errors on a couple games and it's always a nightmare. Even to reproduce behaviors in the code can take major efforts.
As for being responsive... well, I wouldn't presume to know what goes on at DICE in particular, but if I had to guess based on experience, any company that suffers major issues will put in long hours using all personnel needed to fix problems. They might not communicate it outwardly though, out of simple fear of saying the "wrong" thing and making matters worse before they have a solid answer to the problem. Even so, it's a sure thing that all devs have people reading the forums and keeping tabs, even if they are silent.
Yeah, I mean, I get why balance stuff needs tweaking. I think what a lot of dev teams are starting to realize, though, is that they need to be a lot more communicative with the active community about the fact that they're aware of the problem and are working on a solution. Maybe say "We're thinking about XYZ as a possible solution, but we aren't sure yet, and we want to make sure we get our internal testing right." Having beta/testing servers open to the public is helpful, too, before pushing content to the live servers. I know a lot of MMOs have "testing" servers that run the latest beta version of an as-yet unreleased patch so that they can check performance on a wider scale using the actual player-base instead of just internal testers.
I think the real sin in these cases is giving the appearance of dragging your feet. When nothing is said one way or the other, people assume the company just doesn't care or is waiting for the complaints to reach some fever pitch before they'll respond. I tend to think that's bad for business. I mean, not every balance complaint needs to be addressed, but there needs to be better community relations with the public done by people who can actually give real answers and speak substantively (as opposed to "community relations" people whose job it is to just get folks to stop whining -- not the same thing).
Payday 2 has gotten a lot of flak lately for this, and just recently changed how they handle their forums. It's been an improvement, but I think it came way too late.
To its credit, I will say that from the outside, it looks like DICE has actually been more responsive to complaints about things like map balance with Battlefront than in previous games. My guess is that there must be a LOT riding on this as their first crack at the franchise, and they don't want to re-launch it with people saying "Yeah, it was ok, but I wouldn't buy a sequel."
Actually, it can be the other way around. Online functionality is often the way developers maintain interest in a game over a long period of time IF the game is a success to begin with. Single Player is often over in a few hours, only a small percentage of buyers actually play game campaigns to the end- even if they like them. If you have a game that allows heavy modding, then you can sustain a player base with only single player, but otherwise, multiplayer is the part that keeps players coming back because you can build a community around it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the NEXT Battlefront contains a "proper" single player portion but I doubt we'll see anything major this time around. It's a 95% multiplayer title so they'll probably spend the same amount of effort keeping that part of it going.
Multiplayer keeps people playing for a while, but the current model of multiplayer is...in my opinion, shortsighted. EAs games seem to be all about control and centralization. They don't want modded servers, they don't even seem to want dedicated servers at all with this game, and they allow for zero by way of mods. You can't run a custom game, you can't modify the game to make it more "realistic" if you wanted or to limit XYZ vehicles or run your own maps or whathaveyou.
Now, I get that a lot of that is to drive players to buy the Season Pass or individual DLC packs, but at the same time, I tend to think that you build a lot of brand loyalty, and can also really improve a game's longevity by allowing client-side development and running custom games. Of course, that may not play into the release cycle plan where you do a new game every 12-16 months or so, and release DLC every 3-4 months....
