Graphic effects etc. will be nice eye-candy, but won't really affect the behaviour of people. Supression blur for example: It looks great, its makes supressive fire more usefull and hard to shoot back... but still - if I think the situations allows me to try - I pin off a MG with my bolt-action while being under direct fire. So its not really fear of death, more like another thing to "manage" while fighting.
I played Counter Strike quite a lot in my "former gaming career", and while it is pretty arcady run'n'gunning, there are situations where you are actually afraid of your life and/or pretty paniced. Why? Because you actually lose something when you die! In CS's case its your weapon (and therefor money), in RO's case its... nothing! Every life starts and ends at the same "level". There is nothing to achieve for yourself except score and the won match - which is the team-aspect of rewarding for something done well.
So I come to the conclusion, that you need to be able to achieve something with a good score(not just kill!)/death ratio, like a rank. Every soldier starts out at the beginning of a map as a lower recruit, possibly with a fewer weapon-choice than a high-ranked player, comparable to a veteran soldier or a commander (like current officers).
Of course you could change the whole weapon-system and make it completly rank based, but that wouldn't let newbies get hand on all the weapons once in a while.
So why not make it this way:
You choose your class at the beginning:
SMG / Bolt-Action / Anti-Tank / Tank / Sniper / MG
The restrictions in numbers would be the same, to remain balance.
But the loadout depends on the rank! So a recruit Bolt-action soldier would have the rifle, a few clips and thats it! As he climbs ranks he gains access to a better loadout: Soon one or two grenades are avaible, possibly a secondary weapon (pistol/satchel possibly) maybe later binoculars and voice commands, as he reaches the commander status. [By the way, this would also control the amounts of grenades. Two per every soldier isn't that realistic, is it? Anyway, nade spamming isn't any more of a problem in the retail imho]
Like that it would be much more like choosing your "role" and not a actually position, since commanders are not for the one with the fastest connection.
If you change your class (like changing from Rifle to Sniper once the slot is free) you keep your rank, so a middle-ranked soldier would have access to the rifle, a pistol (which a low-rank soldier wouldn't have) as he switches over from a medium-ranked Rifleman and later on he might get hands on a grenade and the officer-status.
Rank-"Levelups" would only occur when respawning, so no magical appeared nade in your pocket when "leveling" up in the middle of a fight. If you perform bad and your ratio becomes worse, you might not be able to respawn with the current rank, but maybe lose access to the pistol as a sniper (for example) in your next life.
I got this idea, as I played Ogledow tonight: I started out as an axie-tank-crew and in my "life" I got a mosin-nagant, two fausts, two nades and still had the ability to drive a tank (I was mainly playing sneaky-pak-soldat-style at that time). I really feared my death, because it wasn't easy to achieve all those weapons and it was really usefull, since I could adapt to many situations with such a loadout.
This system would surely get fear of death working much better and would also encourage people for more teamplay and objective-focused playing, since Objectives raise their own ratio and maybe the score-system could also be reworked some day that you get more points for kills/objectives etc. when there are teammates nearby.
In short:
To make the player fear death, he has to lose something upon death! If the player has something to achieve over as few as possible lifes he'll worthship his survival much more: Reward an effective player with a better weapon loadout, based on this score/death ratio and his initially chosen role. Combine this with historical correct ranks, that would be awesome!
