At first I was left baffled. Crouching provides players with a bonus to their accuracy and if they stay crouched their bleed time is reduced with each tick. Crouching behind cover also provides a defensive bonus in addition to headshot immunity. With all those stacking benefits it almost seems silly to not use cover. It wasn't until I started seeing people blindly lob grenades and run into groups of enemies on suicide bombing runs did I understand what exactly the problem was.
In Decadence players can be shot in the limbs. Getting shot in the arms will lower accuracy, getting shot in the legs will lower movement speed. What some people might initially interpret as lag is actually them moving slowly because of their crippled legs. Shooting also reduces movement speed momentarily depending on what weapon they're using. This is why you rarely see people with shotguns chasing after their targets for long. Once they start shooting they move fairly slowly.
What does this have to do with cover? To put it simply, people who use cover are easy kills for people lobbing grenades. If someone is sitting behind cover shooting at an enemy and that enemy decides to throw a grenade, the person sitting behind cover is going to have to move pretty quickly. The problem is their movement speed is reduced because of all that shooting they just did, so no matter how fast they react chances are they wont move a safe distance away from the grenade before it explodes.
What I did was modify the movement delay procedure to stop reducing movement speed when the player is crouching. After two days of testing I noticed people who blindly lobbed grenades were getting less kills and people who used cover effectively started living through more battles. To think one simple thing could effect gameplay so much, I now have much more respect for the people at Blizzard who maintain tournament-level game balance for Starcraft 2.
Also included in this patch is the first batch of custom gear colors for subscribers. I'll definitely be adding more stuff like this and I plan on remaking the settings menu so it's all easier to manage. Thanks to the few people who did subscribe early, and to those who haven't please remember it's only $15 for a whole year and every dime of what you pay goes into new maps, game modes and weapons. If you want to support the game, please don't hesitate to subscribe.
You can read the full patch notes here.
I agree - it's nearly impossible to fairly balance a game as gameplay will always change - however, I'd say you're doing a fine job and keep on doing what you're doing!