Well, they have to. How else would they know how to balance movement? Do nothing with it? That's not going anywhere towards progress.

In the previous builds during Replication and E3, people have complained about every class of merc doing what I like to call the "dance of death" in which both opposing mercs circle each other endlessly until one of them successfully shoots the other or until both of them run out of ammo and dissolve into a melee fight. More often than not, the latter happens. Heavy suit users have noticed how too easy it is for a scout to just circle the heavy while strafing and then widdle down their armor to nothing leaving the heavy merc helpless to defend himself. And in a match full of randoms, this is a death sentence because no one will be around to rescue the poor heavy merc. Please keep in mind that squad/corp management was non-existent at that time. Every match was literally a random match no matter what you do.

Then came Precursor and Codex. The circle strafing that led to the constant "dance of death" was nerfed. Although a bit overnerfed. CCP then adjusted it to have a slight buff to the strafing so that the scout and assault suits would not be so slow in strafing but not be overpowering in strafing either. One more thing to keep in mind is that the strafing speed of the heavy and logistics suits were never affected even to this day. Only the assaults and scouts were.

Today, far less people are complaining about the strafing speed now in Codex than they did during Replication or Precursor.

Today, the number one complaint regarding movement now is the sensitivity settings. People are complaining that it's having almost no effect in how you turn or respond no matter what extremes you set it to.

The second biggest complaint regarding movement now is the sensation that the pace is too slow because the maps are simply too big. And this is just with the highly-restrictive red zone. If you look at the map and zoom out all the way, you will notice that the maps are huge and that you are only fighting in an area just about 1/16ths to 1/8ths the size of the actual map. Imagine when the red zone is finally opened. Then the only way to get around is with an LAV or a dropship.