After having hours of playtime and numerous conversations with other "hardcore realism unit" friends, we have come to the conclusion that RO2 feels more like a spectator sport than a war.
In RO1, DH, Mare Nostrum etc, you are thrown onto a battlefield, most often a large open environment or urban city, and can tactically move throughout the map from cover to cover, flanking the enemy, and utilizing support weapons to provide suppression and cover fire to advance. When you entered a village you were never quite sure what you would find there. This gameplay threw you into a mindset of being in a real war, as the tactics, weapon handling, and terrain mimicked that of what one would imagine a a real war setting to be. So much so, that many people who just entered the game would spend minutes proned in spawn scared to advance. This is the reality of war, people die and people are scared. You'll be hard pressed to find someone from WW2 who just said "Yeah, war was fun!" No, they will tell you they were scared and the only thing that got them through it was their comrades and if the reality that if they didn't kill they would be killed.
In RO2 it feels more like they have taken a map, let's say Apartments, and inserted it into the center of a Roman Colosseum. We have 10+ minutes to be gladiators and amuse the plebs with mindless bloodshed. After this 10+ minutes passes, we enter the 2nd quarter and start again with the mindless camping, running, and gunning through our rat maze like headless chickens. No tactics, no room to maneuver, no map distance to bother with support weapons, just mindless running from one point to another through a series of choke-points while the crowd goes wild and places bets on which side will die out first. Countdown is even more like a sport with the rounds lasting 2-5 minutes and everyone spawning again for another go, much the way CS felt like, and to a degree IS, a sport rather than an actual counter-terrorism simulation. What I liked so much about RO1 and its mods was that they felt more like a simulation and less like a generic fps, and the map sizes played a large part in that.
Their step away from RO1 and simulation is evident by the removal of transport vehicles and preference for small maps. If TW are set on leaving the game feeling as a sport, I hope the community will revive that sense of real war by making some large open combined arms maps with villages and urban centers. I miss fighting for a purpose, with realistic objectives and teamwork. With small maps comes the inability to work as a team and a meaningless shift toward run-and-gun solo tactics.
Below are some changes which I feel would bring back that feeling of being in a real war.
*Larger combined arms maps, and by large I mean actual dynamic open maps without the generic large circular pit surrounded by three story buildings filled with snipers.
*Removal of "phases" of maps. Let us access entire maps at all times.
*Longer Bandage Time
*Removal of names over heads without having your cross hair exactly on person's body. As it stands it has a large open radius by which names will go up over a head, and they remain after moving off of that target.
*Ability to swap Radar for old school compass
*Addition of weapon sway with no stamina and after 30 seconds of holding your breath you need to catch your breath and sway incurs.
*Lessen the ability to zoom so much with the rifle server wide
*Give us some LONG rounds... 30-60 minutes of territory on these currently unavailable large maps.
*Transport Vehicles
Please realize that if I did not enjoy these games I would not be posting, but I just hope the potential of RO2 is met in the future and that it grows more towards the simulation side of things heading into release than it currently is at now. Thanks for making RO1 and RO2, now please don't forget about us who like to feel like we are in real war and not in a gladiatorial performance.
