While Merl probably just overreacts, his basic idea is true.
It was predictable that Reloaded will not be able to revive such a screwed up game, atleast not in time.
Josh announced several things (for example more aggressive balancing changes) which never have been done in time. After almost one month, I didn't see any change in balancing. The turret damage icnrease was before this announcement.
In addition, I citicize Josh/Reloaded for approaching things slowly, as he stated in one dev update. Time is a resource Hawken/ADH wasted before. Imagine if hawken would be finished in like 2 years. That would be almost 5 years of developement to release a game that is stable. By that time, Hawken's main power (good graphics) are worthless since technology developes at a very fast rate.
So the only thing Hawken can attract players with is a weakness (poor graphics compared to other future games) and game specific/unique features such as gameplay (mech shooter, fast paced CQC, etc.). I fear this won't be enough and Hawken will never ever be a serious competetor to other F2P FPS games.
I even doubt that Hawken will ever get out of the beta phase at all.
See, I myself already switched to other games (Elite Dangerous at the moment) because, though ED has mixed reviews, I enjoy the game but furthermore I have hope in improvement, while I lost all hopes in Hawken.
The thing Merl is telling the majority and Reloaded is that Hawken is still in a terrible state (I like to call it having a disease). And the longer the disease is persistent, the more damage Hawken will suffer longterm.
In addition, he wants to tell Reloaded that trust is a valueable resource presented by the community and that it doesn't really help to promise stuff that is not delivered in time (ADH style) and being unsure about certain aspects is a disaster by itself because it feels like the devs have no idea about what they are doing.
See, I have played some games with Josh himself and I think we all can agree that he is a nice person, but additionally, we can agree that he does not really understand the gameplay of Hawken. Considering him being good in Hawken would be a lie.
Now, a developer hasn't to be good in the game but he should atleast understand it. And as far as I can tell, he does not.
This results in a dependency of the community due to the lack of understanding to make influencign changes, which is (in my eyes) the main reason why no balancing changes are made, 'cause our devs still don't really understand the game.
Now my beloved restaurant example: I don't care wheather or not the kitchen is burning, I, as a customer, expect my food to be delivered in time with a decent quality. And why the kitchen may no longer burn, the reason for that isn't that the fire got cleared but that the fire already burned everything that is burnable due to the fatal failure of ADH.
Josh has a huge task to do and, with all respect, I doubt he will succeed. I'm sorry.