I've personally only been active in the FAF community for almost a year so I suppose I'm still relatively new. One aspect of the state of FAF community that I strongly dislike is the amount of friction publicly displayed between the different teams involved in FAF. Hang around the Discord long enough and you'll see long arguments between the coloured names over certain issues in or out of the game. Whether the issue is actually substantial or not, I can't tell. But I feel like this sort of dirty laundry being aired out in the public for all server members to see only serves to provide an air of animosity between contributors that brings down the vibes of the place and could potentially deter future contributors. I've had contributor and moderating roles in other community Discords and there were usually rules to present a united front while mostly civil debates and arguments took place behind closed doors, away from the public eye. So coming here and not really seeing that was a bit of a culture shock for me. At this point, whether any change on this would actually do anything isn't even clear to me since it appears that this has been the way it is for quite awhile but it is something that occupies my mind from time to time.
I don't really have an educated opinion on game balance because I don't really think I'm qualified to comment on that. Having to groundfire T3 Sera subs is annoying though.
Replay-review channel is great, although you really only see the same few trainers helping out in the threads. Whether the rest of the team are inactive or prefer helping people privately. Who knows. But I have no complaints regarding the quality and speed of advice given there.
CGN is a nice step forward, the gimmicks are interesting enough to keep it different from a typical mapgen lobby and the emphasis on voice channels gives it a much more relaxed and social environment.
I look forward to more frequent tournaments involving the lower-ranked members of the community. Even without any substantial rewards, trying to win in a more competitive setting is a good incentive for improvement as well as reaching out to others for help and practice. It may not attract the most viewers but it's a net positive for the participants and the community.
If there's one addition I would like to see, it would be a more transparent process on how maps are selected for the map pool in matchmaking queues. I don't have issues with what maps are in the pool for my rating (1100~ ladder) but to my untrained eye, the rotating pool feels pretty random.
Of course, I wish servers were more stable and resistant to DDOS attacks but I don't have reasonable suggestions on how to achieve that so it might as well be a pipe dream.