My 2 cents, since I was asked. :)
I was one of those people who had trouble with not being able to contact my partners. I also learned early on that communicating with any of the other 4 players who did not share a country with me was next to useless. That is what I don't like about this game. I spent all my time trying to get the other two people to agree to moves, and decided early on that if I wanted England to do something it was better to have GT talk to TE then it was for me (IG). If I wanted France to do something it was better to have IR talk to RF than for me to talk to them directly. As for Austria, I had no good way of getting Austria and Italy to work together. I would definately be up for randomly assigned powers, as opposed to the current pre-defined dualities.
One other point that ruined the game for me was Russia attacking Germany. When I tried to explain to IR (the original) that Italy wasn't moving until Russia backed off he called me all sorts of names. That's what started his whining about the game being unplayable and he left.
One rule change that I would like to see would be instead of the synch or hold, to be a 50/50 probability for each unit. 50% chance Army A does order X and 50% chance Army A does order Y. If they synch, no roll necessary, and this allows a country to move about half his units if the other player disappears.
It was fun though.