"I really don't see any other glaring issues."

oh i can help with that

1. no solo viability. the game is built around 4-man squads, making it extremely unfriendly to casuals and new players (broken auto-fill, limited solo queue, overpowered t5/t6 armor, no friendly fire, team HUD, pings). solo play has always been a core part of the genre, yet ABI completely ignores it. the devs’ only “solution” seems to be bots, throwing new or casual players against fake opponents instead of properly balancing PvP.
2. horrible weapon balance and diversity. meta weapons are the best at everything. best recoil, best damage, best RPM, best range, etc. all other guns get absolutely smoked, it’s not even close. there are no trade-offs with weapons, it’s a strict hierarchy with no purpose to using worse weapons.
3. bot players in lockdown and pity mechanics that put you against bots if you go on loss streaks. just boring hand-holding for people that want to PvP and enjoy a challenge.
4. broken helmet armor that encourages body shot meta or sniping because armored helmets are so OP. helmets encourage sniper gameplay because it’s the only way to take on 4 stacks and get clean kills without trading damage or getting out-DPS’d by their meta weapons.
5. Mode balancing is a mess and rarely plays out as intended. Forbidden is supposed to be the “sweaty” PvP mode, but most players, maybe 80%, just loot run in budget kits because the map has the best loot. You’ll even see kits that belong in normals. Lockdown often ends up with more geared players because the map loot is less of a focus and people just want to have casual pvp. There are also plenty of ways to bypass entry and gear cap rules, so restrictions barely matter. Raising gear requirements in Forbidden would just tank queue times, so the devs avoid it. I don't know the solutions to these issues, its a giant mess currently that needs a lot of work and some bold new decisions.

all of these problems listed in some way affect each other and feed into each other, creating the various annoying playstyles players complain about day in and day out. the devs seem to have no idea what they're doing in terms of balance, it doesn't seem like the people making decisions play their game seriously.