All these RO1 vets complaining about pace must have never played the old Danzig/Baskin Valley just to name two.
All these RO1 vets would get killed just as easily in any game or even real life because they are not able to adapt to the situation. What is happening around them has to happen at a certain speed and a certain distance, it has to happen in a certain place with a certain kind of weapon. If everything is perfect, they can kill with precision and ferocity. If not, they die.
These guys are amateurs playing soldiers, not real solders, at least in terms of the way they think. When I did infantry training, we were practically programmed so that any time staff (what the soldiers training you are called) could say to you "What is the role of the infantryman?" and the first words out of your mouth without thinking were "To close with and kill the enemy".
One sentence that encapsulates the infantryman's role, and the RO1 vets only do half of it.
There is a Biritsh documentary series airing at the moment called Young Soldiers. The first couple of episodes let you see a few of the things they do to program the raw recruit and turn him into a soldier. Most of them have nothing to do with shooting.
From day one, you are yelled at and "beasted" whenever you make the slightest mistake or hesitate. You do exactly what you're told the instant you're told it, without thought. You are being trained to become part of a well oiled machine that DOESN'T think for itself. Thinking is dangerous. You don't have time in combat to think. Your commanders and your training will do all the thinking for you. Just apply the tactics you are taught to accomplish the tasks you are given.
This is done for two reasons. One is to make everyone as uniform as possible, so that a commanding officer knows if he says to do something, no matter which soldier he says it to, they all know what he wants and how to do it. The other reason is for the soldiers benefit as much as any one else. He is constantly pressured, even when he is physically and mentally exhausted, so that he can get used to the sensory overload. It's like a boxer sparring with an opponent before a fight. He is "conditioning" his mind and body to deal with the pace and stress and confusion of combat, and telling him what to do when he CAN'T think: Follow your orders.
That's what I mean about these RO1 vets being amateurs playing at soldiers. Amateurs don't undergo the intense psychological training that real soldiers do, so they simply can not fathom why someone would stick his head up to try and see where the MG that is shooting at him might be.
To them, the bullets are everything. To a soldier, not letting down his comrades, his commanders and his country (in that order) is everything. If he DOESN'T think like that, he won't make it through the training. The majority of people who enter basic training, no matter how fit or physically strong, no matter how intelligent, simply can not adjust to the different way of thinking. They are the people that get their comrades killed, so they aren't welcome.
You read the stories the soldier tells when he gets back from the front and think that is how he was thinking when he was actually there. More often than not, it isn't. That is how he thinks once he has had time to process what happened, and what he did. That happens AFTER the battle. During the battle all he was thinking was "Close with and kill the enemy" - thats how he was TRAINED to think.
Up to and during WWI, armies approached each other in force, forming long well defined front lines. Everything 'that side' was 'no man's land' or 'enemy territory' while everything 'this side' was friendly territory and safe, even relatively close to the front line itself. This is how the RO1 vets fight a battle. They expect all the enemy to be "over there" and nothing but friendlies to be "over here".
When they guy beside them ISN'T a friendly, they go to pieces. They have no time to think, they have not trained their reactions, so they do stupid things and are easily killed. Then they complain about it not being realistic because of the sway, or because the SMG/AS the guy used is overpowered. It's never about how they reacted to the situation, it's always someone else's fault.
They are no more realistic in the way they think than any CoD style Rambo.
All the guys complaining, whether they be RO1 vets, or new arrivals from the CoD style games, are the guys who quit or are thrown out of basic training. They are the guys that simply can not adjust to the role they are being expected to fulfil, and they would be more of a liability on the battlefield than they are worth.