Yeah, I noted the same thing. It’s like Westwood strategy games versus Starcraft. Everybody playing Red Alert 2 and 3 know that there’s little point about balance in these games. It’s all about “over-balancing” - OP characters putting down other OP characters.
Even Call of Duty has these aspects. For example, the first shot of ANY gun is exempted from recoil or accuracy calculations. Basically it’s a “free hitscan shot”. Only the second bullet onwards uses a weapon’s actual statistics. This means the game rewards even players of relatively low skill who simply are able to at least place a crosshair’s center over an enemy onscreen for “one free hit”.
The “fleeting feeling of awesomeness” in games like COD and Red Alert… and Overwatch… create the “Illusion of Balance”. Because you are given a small win here and there in one-on-one combat and a bit of bombast, you get the illusion that things must be balanced.
The main difference is in the results of encounters. In a game like Dirty Bomb, just like it was in old DOOM or Quake 3, you frequently edge out someone to win the encounter. Maybe your opponent dies or you, but usually both of you were quite damaged as a result. With high TTK weapons, these encounters normally leave the winner hurting. You think: “Well that was harder than I thought.” But sometimes as you digest that thought you’re gunned down by someone and you think: “Crap!” and you have it all to do again. There’s a very high emphasis on movement, positioning, and how to sustain combat (rather than get the jump and initiate it).
In COD, for example, this is very rare. With the “first free hit” mechanic, combined with guns that do between 48 to 25 damage in close to medium distances, it usually comes down to a game of “who shot first”, then 2, 3, or 4 hitmarkers later one of you is down and out. Usually the winner only gets grazed, but frequently the result is the winner suffers little to no damage and is ready to gun down (or get gunned down) on the next skirmish. This leads to, again, the “fleeting feeling of awesomeness” - the “Illusion of Balance”. The emphasis is on shot placement (hence why ADS is a core skill there), reflexes, speed, timing, and start-stop-start sprinting.
Dirty Bomb is more like a traditional shooter where characters only have medium capacity at most to perform to a superlative level.
Apples and oranges.
It’s totally fine to play and have fun with what you have fun with.