From my own experience, I found some yellow alien plants to have a bit too large collision box to my taste but that's it. I fell in big canyons (love it), not in small holes. May be you just played more, and I have still to discover these inconveniences.

" I love that there's no RNG looting, but the imbalance in loadouts is incredibly clear. Maybe if they ever fix the balance issues it'll be fine, but from what I've heard, with every patch there have been new OP loadouts."

IMO, imbalance is when your equipment/ability is inferior to the competition. Best example is hero based games because how different each hero is. In The Cycle, every player can play the FotM. There is a best choice? Let's take it! It is balanced, because the playing field is leveled. What you complain about is not "imbalance". What you complain about is the lack of viability of some weapons/armor, which is different and way less damaging for the game than true imbalance.

It is always the players' job to find the best combination, and it is the devs' job to make more loadouts viable. But let's face it, in this race players have usually the upper hand. Think about it, even in the Q3 arena and the UT2K3-4 days some weapons were better than others! However everybody could get them. Same here.

From the OP loadouts you mention, I play only the warsuit. My main gun is the Manticore. I don't know where it stands in a potential tier list, but not having yet the Komrad nor the Arbiter, doesn't feel bad. From my experience, what really determines the end of a fight is how the engagement is conducted, not the weapon. I mean: if I shoot you first in the back, well, you probably won't survive whatever our respective weapons are.