I feel devs have intended to please the players, those who play their mod the most, they can't be blamed for that.
You are right to speak your mind though, however what you're asking for smooth (bringing back the trolling with siege towers and catapults, the healing tents, the roofcamping and fucking around) would be ok for this "conquest gametype", but not for battle. Only my humble opinion.
I agree it doesn't fit with battle the way it is now, yes, and am not asking for it back. Merely pointing out the evolution of the mod to the point where that kind of gameplay no longer exists. And I agree that it would fit into a conquest gametype, which is the number one thing I'd like to see added in cRPG. Maps that go on for half an hour or longer, with places that you need to fortify and defend, exuses to wander around the edges of the map with your buddies, ladders back in the game, hell people could be using siege towers and catapults (and hopefully soon, ballistas!) for legitimate gameplay purposes. It would be a breath of fresh air. Instead they took out all of the fun and half the skill of the warband engine and stuck us with boring Battle and almost nothing else.
Conquest would be lame as fuck seeing as everybody would be spread out all over the place, but I guess you as a 2h hero would like that. 2h heroes and cav would reign supreme. Besides respawns are uncool, battle = best mode.
Also, most of the 'fun' things you described were fun for the 3 people doing it and boring/lame/annoying as fuck for the 117 other players.
Funny, a 2handed cav player I know posted in my Conquest thread that he thought archery would be the overpowered class, because they could sit in flag cap areas and defend them with cover. I think every class could shine in that mode, and people would definitely stick together to capture or defend points, except flankers and cav and the sort will be useful in harassing rear areas and cutting off reinforcements or any sort of thing.
Wouldn't know for sure unless it was playtested. I feel like Field by the River would be ideal for a simple beta of it, with the current spawns as 2 points and the ruins everyone fights over as the third point. Can't imagine it will be that different from battle, except allow the map to breathe longer, the rage-levels to go down, people to care less about dying and more about working as a team and doing stuff. And the campers and builders and all those guys would actually fit into the teams quite well, instead of trolling Battle.
Also to everyone talking about missing organized events and clan play, my friends and I are working on getting a 2 vs 2 duel tournament going soon for the NA community as we speak. I love competitive gaming and wish there was more support for it built into cRPG myself, but it is an entirely seperate issue from the ideas I'm discussing here and might be worth its own thread. In-game support for things like 5 vs 5 scrims, team rankings, in-client betting on match outcomes would be great, and a melee game like this could even have appeal as an e-sport. Too bad the overhead had to be nerfed to shit and stabs made so wonky that makes dueling kind of lame now.