anyone playing early nc1 will remember the massive aoe based fights cause a defending team had to run from another op. The constant underground whoring and aoe-ing annoys a lot of people, the aoe kills you in case of a long sync and the defending team has a distinct advantage of underground access.
Now i know it's daring but what about a test patch for a few weeks where genreps and undergrounds are unlocked so we can see if that kind of op wars would actually work nowadays.