I can see where you are coming from. You have made sensible suggestions the last couple of years with regards to gear standardization.
I understand your suggestion to move CF to a more stable deathmatch environment. I think it would draw some back. It might alienate others.

I kinda like the crazy gear. It is bad for a level competition field, but I don't see that as the main draw of CF. It is more about drama for me.

I often hear the "I need to use lots of preps to compete, I don't want to spend my time gathering preps for a half an hour for that 2 minute
PK encounter" argument. That is certainly a valid view point.

I think many of the current problems with fun vs time investment is due to lack of players thus creating a viscious circle especially for those who
prefer the PK element. There is a lot of rock paper scissors balancing in PK. With lower numbers your normal range will be skewed more often than not.

When there were lots of players online there would always be a favourable match regardless of preps or gear.
So the game were more a case of avoiding certain players while looking for others with lots of neutral or unknown parties thrown in.
And the beauty or the balance was that the chain of hunting/avoiding would be different for different builds.
It was also easier to find someone who were willing to do whatever you found fun simply because there were a larger pool to draw from.

Now the aggressive types are bored and so will tend to hound more merciless the one guy in their range simply because there are no other targets,

Some guys might get stuck in a bad place with their range consisting of 2 bad match ups who might or might not give them any quarter.
The guy looking to get a level will wait 5 minutes. See that there is no likely candidates to group and then logout.

Low numbers is just bad for a social, competive game where balance issues were seen as something fixed with expected no. of bad match ups versus good match ups in a large population.