Here's a few important issues I believe should be addressed. Note that I pretty much exclusively play frontline so some of these issues may be specific to that game mode or its maps.

1. Objective capture HUD element sometimes does not display. This appears to be a new bug as of 1.8 as I never had this issue before. Sometimes you will walk onto a point and the HUD element to let you know the status of the point and capture progress will not come up. Very problematic as you have no idea of knowing whether you are capturing the point or losing it.

2. Very inconsistent objective capture status. This was an issue in 1.7 and it is still present in 1.8. The status being displayed when on an objective (when it actually displays) is very inconsistent. For examples, it will often say "Clearing" when an enemy is still on point. Also, I've had instances where my friend and I would see two different status while on the same point. It just doesn't work right and it should be looked into.

3. Incorrect spawn location. It doesn't happen often but I've seen many instances where your team will respawn one spawn back despite still controlling the point that should allow them to spawn closer. I am unsure how/when exactly that happens, but I believe every time I saw it happen the point was contested. Almost like the game gets ahead of itself and makes the team spawn one spawn back before the point is actually lost.

4. Poor team balancer both during and before the game. Covered in another post I made, but the team balancer needs improvement. Live switching, switching the same person repeatedly, balancing players onto a team with 0 waves and throwing the top players of a team onto the other team would be the main issues. To add to this, I think the team balancer should do a better job of balancing the teams at the beginning of the game. This is especially apparent when there's an update and/or a sale as it is not uncommon for most of the high levels to end up on one side and the other team getting completely stomped. Sure, player level does not equal skill, but it does guarantee some level of experience which more often than not will translate to some level of skill. While not a perfect solution, I have no doubt that evening out the teams by player level to some degree would improve the average "fairness"' of the games.

5. Poor map balance. Some maps like Outskirts significantly favor the Security team. They get on D first and it is easy for them to defend. It's not impossible to win as Insurgent but either the Security team has to screw up hard or the Insurgent team need to be stacked. Uneven balance is fine in a gamemode like Push, but in a tug-of-war type of gamemode, you can't have one team at a significant disadvantage from the beginning as this often leads to predictable games. I suggest going over the maps and at the very least making sure that both teams can get on point at the same time. Tideway is another problem map but for both teams. For the security team, B is too far off to the side from C which makes it difficult to both attack C and defend B at the same time. This is evident by how often B can get taken immediately after the Insurgent capture C as there is no clear and safe retreat path to B from C for the Security team. For the Insurgent team, the spawn location when the Security team has C is extremely vulnerable to helicopters. There is literally no cover in that area and you have a good 15 seconds+ of running in the open to do before finding shelter. In short, either you run out, die and then lose B or you wait it out and still lose B. Either way, you're going to lose B and then the game shortly after.

6. The helicopters, the Black Hawk especially, are still the best call outs in the game. As it stands, they function as map-wide area denial at no risk to the Security team, unlike everything the Insurgents have at their disposal . Sure all the Insurgents have gas masks, but the gas smoke still acts as a vision blocker when entering buildings (where the gas is ineffective) which naturally makes assaulting the objective more difficult. Meanwhile, the Security team can call an helicopter and for the next while the insurgent will struggle to both defend and attack objectives, no matter where that helicopter was called. People love to say that experienced people know how to deal with them but what exactly does that mean? Either you hide or move indoors only (if that's even possible) or hope that one of your Demo lands their rocket. Alternatively, you can get the whole team to shoot it down, but even 30 seconds of a few players doing that can be enough to lose a point or worse. Even if they don't kill anyone, they will still limit movement significantly for 1 team only and that's already significant in that game mode, especially on some maps where cover is limited. As it stands, the Black Hawk is also significantly more deadly than the Apache simply because of its erratic firing pattern. A player can learn to move between the Apache's volleys, but the Black Hawk can seemingly just fire endlessly, making it much more difficult to deal with. The issue isn't just that the helicopters are strong, it's also that they can be called anywhere without planning or thought and they will still function just as well. Meanwhile, everything the Insurgent has can potentially be beneficial to the Security team if used incorrectly.

7. Smoke grenades are buggy and inconsistent. Depending on how far away you are from it or how deep you are in it, you will see something completely different. Sometimes it completely blinds you and sometimes it literally does the opposite and seemingly highlights player models instead. In short, they are difficult to trust as you never know what the other players can see. They look and function great from a distance but as soon as players have to fight in or around them, everything is up in the air.

8. Flash grenades are very unreliable. It seems like the most insignificant amount of obstruction between a player and the flash will lead to it having no effect at all. This makes flashes particularly bad when used indoors as the odds of it landing underneath something is obviously very high. You would think that they would work best indoors, but the opposite is true in Sandstorm. Maybe consider some sort of "shock" effect when it detonates in close proximity and only obstructed by props?

I think that about sums up my biggest issues with the game. Still love the game, but some issues are fairly major so hopefully you can fix sooner rather than later.