Piles of people in RO:CA & RO1 used the STG44 almost all the time. It's basically the same weapon, yet nobody complained this much about it in either game. They were there, people used them, people countered them.
When comparing the actual game mechanics and design of the previous RO's that had the STG44, there is really no difference between the STG44 and the MKB42, yet I continually saw all these wonderful "RO1 Vets" running around & spamming their little hearts out with the STG44 in every map that had it available.
Yet suddenly these same jokers come along and trash anybody who does the same thing with the MKB42 due to some technicality they hang onto with a death grip.
I'm no grizzled Ostfront vet--only joined the fray in March, though I have put 300 hours into the game. I both faced and fielded the StG many times on Danzig, Odessa, Konigsplatz, Lyeskrovy, and others.
A agree--in RO1 we countered the StG and treated it as a natural threat of the battlefield. We all learned to watch out when emerging from that Odessa forward Soviet spawn for the StG invariably down the street behind the sandbags. We all learned to toss a grenade into the basement of the Command Center to flush out the StG camper, or to advance cautiously into the ruins on the right of Langer in case a German assault rifleman was sitting in the opposite window, sights trained on that infernal doorway.
But back then, the StG differed from the Mkb in three ways. It had excessive, unrealistic recoil in single-shot mode, it did not penetrate walls, and it did not suppress the enemy to anywhere near the same degree.
I'm sure you, like me, put hours into practice servers exploring the intricacies of every Ostfront weapon. I don't know what conclusion you reached, but I never bothered much with the Ostfront StG. Firing it in single shots displaced the barrel unpredictably by about an inch with every pull of the trigger, the sideways recoil in hipfire was dangerously innacurate in close range, and the weapon in general just felt
weird.
The Mkb has none of those issues. Of all its traits, I consider suppression to be its greatest asset. A German assault trooper can run blindly into the open on Spartanovka, skid to a halt, then fire three rounds at the Russian rifleman training a bead on him. That rifleman will find his aim off by about two inches, his heart pounding like a taiko drum, allowing his enemy to--while still standing brazenly in the open--adjust his own aim a centimeter and kill the Soviet.
Again, I don't think they're the ultimate weapon. They are, however, a weapons system to be respected--as was intended by design--and giving one team six of them does have an effect on gameplay.
In all modesty and truthfulness, I've clubbed Mkb users to death with a Nagant, impaled them from all angles, sawn them in half with hipfire from a DP-28, blown them to bits with anti-tank grenades, thrown F1s cooked Ostfront-style into their faces, gibbed them with PTRS fire, even chased one off the edge of the third floor of Zab's house to their demise (that was a particularly hilarious incident). I'll flank them, surprise them mid-reload, or crawl on my belly for fifty yards to outflank the specific assault rifleman picking us off out of spawn on Spartanovka. I have plenty of tactics to use against them, but none of them are for use against an Mkb head-on anywhere between ten and 120 yards. And you know what?
That's the way it should be. It is a fearsome firearm in that situation, unmatched by anything in the Soviet arsenal.
However, that's not the way taking on
Axis assault troopers should be, or how RO2 Soviet gameplay should be with any frequency. If Mkbs were limited to one per German team, I would have no complaints taking cover from its deadly lead and evaluating my options. I'd even get a thrill, a rush of adrenaline, knowing that I'm taking on the rarest, most lethal Axis small-arms weapon.
It's when I find myself in that situation over and over again per match to the point where I sigh and think:
shoot--another one of those!
Without much grumbling, I'll deal with the offending assault trooper and move on or die trying.
But it becomes mundane, a challenge that has lost all excitement because fifteen seconds after you've killed him on the far right, he's respawned and he's going far right again to take revenge.
I love Red Orchestra too much to "move on if I don't like it." Even if the Mkb remains usable for six Axis players, I'll be playing this game for at least until RS comes out. I wish I'd come across Ostfront sooner, and if RO2 had been slated to come out in 2015, I'd have played Ostfront with enthusiasm until then. And I do enjoy Red Orchestra 2, Mkb and all. Heck, I love being the underdog. However, I think its proliferation has affected the gameplay, and that limiting it would improve the game overall. That's all.