Well, I personally wasnt a big fan of it, most things you pointed out were discussed several times on discord, sure capture loop was okay for marines, but xenos felt babysitting marines or they would turn into only true faith and bomb themselves along with hive was kinda boring, imagine if we had masallah bombings with OT nades inside hive
and regarding long rounds being better, thats up to tastes, some didnt liked it because it was quite boring and felt tiring as it was, remember this is mid 2019 gameplay, you had mega FOBs that would cade up to ten lines of defenses, buggy DEFCON that wasnt as efficient and an overall uninteresting press one button to win horse with xenos, imagine if you were a doctor for 3/4 hours straight because marines werent good enough at finishing earlier and xenos are stuck struggling to break through thousands of cades, its mind numbing for shipside roles.
And combat hugging wasnt really great... hugger sniping was cursed