Blatantly false. Whether you admit it or not, you are not representative of the community. The wider community sentiment is definitively against this mode.
Most players are apathetic and uninterested; this is the silent majority of War Thunder players. There is a heavy bias against the expression of opinions by this group; people scarcely engage in conversation to express indifference. Conversely, those with strong opinions (both for and against) are equally disproportionately overrepresented in discussion. Have you realized this pattern?
You would think, then, that support and opposition would be similarly prevalent, right?
Look at what people are saying, everywhere. Across the WT forum, across Reddit, Discord servers, and other Western forums. There is a wealth of opinions against the coming infantry mode. Some are cynical of Gaijin’s implementation of the mode, others state the identity of War Thunder as a vehicle game, but above all, there is the indignation of Gaijin’s diversion of money, devs, and attention to something few wanted. The embitterment from the neglect of the aforementioned attention, devs, and money for tanks, aircraft, and ships, for balance, for maps and modes, for the already existing game ignored, for the thousands of bugs and details forgotten by corporate.
You justify yourself by saying “players joined for combined arms”. It is very telling that you need to resort to vague generalities, abstraction of reality, and false equivalence (of infantry to the greater idea of combined arms). You dare not expand on the specifics, for any view of the facts contradict your narrative.
We the players of War Thunder joined for exactly what it is: a realistic simulator of tanks, planes, helicopters, boats and ships. Is there an overlap with infantry? Of course, it is a war game. But most of us didn’t join to play as little Timmy with his M4A1. If I wanted “combined arms” with infantry, I would be playing Battlefield, Squad, or Arma 3. No, We joined for the steel beasts of war, armored and armed with the most powerful weapons on the frontlines. We joined for the history of research and development of military vehicles, from historical icons to modern tech angels of war. Is a continuation of these principles wrong to ask for?
The zeitgeist of the present day, and certainly throughout the past multiple years also, is a rejection of Gaijin’s abuses, and the necessity of reform. Those who claim to see otherwise are only blind.