2042 will probably be my last Battlefield

I always think this for almost every Battlefield I've played since 4, but DICE has always managed to walk that line of be justtt similar enough to what I like Battlefield for to want to keep playing it. Now I've come to accept many of the reoccurring problems with battlefield. The netcode, the numerous technical issues, rampant hacker problems. But 2042....sigh....2042 is the first Battlefield I've played where either the developers have absolutely no experience with Battlefield/what makes Battlefield "Battlefield", or they tried to do a complete 180 with the Franchise to turn it into something else. Both options I'm not a fan of. There are sooo many systemic flaws in the foundations of this franchise that make no sense on why DICE would do this in the game. To the point where I just cringe when I come across them. So lets talk about them. 

1. Specialists vs Classes - This is beating a dead horse, but I'm hoping to go into a bit more technical detail on WHY classes were/are important in BF. So classes go beyond just feeling like a team. The class system is a way to put in a check and balance system so that players are forced into situations to play as a team while at the same time not making one person feel too powerful. For example, oh you want to use the marksman or sniper rifles? That's fine! But you can' have infinite ammo or anti vehicle. Oh you want to heal? You can't have infinite ammo, anti tank, or crazy range. Oh you want to be anti vehicle? That's fine, but you want be an anti-infantry killing machine like assault. The restrictions on what gadgets you used and what weapons you used allowed a nice balance between infantry/vehicle to exist. But making all weapons and gadgets usable in any combination, you've created an absolute disaster of a balancing task ahead. The overhead on trying to make this work is going to be a none stop battle. One week its the PP29. Then its the SVK. Next patch its the PKB. Then the PBK, then the AK. You're going to be constantly chasing your tail because most of these weapon types are trying to fill the same role with no restrictions. Then you get to combine this balancing disaster with attachment switching on the fly, and it's just going to be a constant issue. Then you have the horrible specialist design in of its self. Oh, the specialists that can fly, scale walls, have infinite self heals, or infinite armor/ammo are the most popular/best performing? How can this be surprising. Then you doubled down on your mistake by introducing a gadget that self heals (ontop of there already being a timed self heal and a specialist that can heal) or gives itself armor. So now you're telling players "Ok you need to choose. Do you want to be able to heal yourself, give yourself armor, or play as a team"....and now we have this issue where in a lot of games most of the server is running self heals/armor because they want to be more effective in killing infantry. This is such a tornado if bad decisions for balance. 
2. Armor - Armor was not needed in this game. It just feels out of place. I mean on one hand its a good way to help pad the issue against netcode. But it also impacted a major role in Battlefield. Sniping. With armor sniping has become less effective. Its almost as if each Battlefield iteration, sniping gets pushed more to the sidelines. Now I don't blame you. I know in Battlefield 4 you can get a server where 30% of your team are sitting back as snipers. But sniping in this particular battlefield is sooo utterlypointless. Maybe its good if there's a stationary objective, but overall its just pretty bad. This is compounded in the 128 player version where you shoot one sniper bullet and the tracer caused the 30 enemies to know exactly where you are and you get lit up. 
3. 128 Players - This was just a bad decision. No changes were made to adjust for the increase in playercount. Now you have situations where either no body on your team is running anti vehicle, or so many people are that the sky is filled with rockets. I've been in games where both of these are happening and neither is fun. It just turned the mode into an absolute cluster where the individual actions gets hyper minimalized. 
4. Map Design - The map design is just horrid. The overuse of skyscrapers. The repeated wide open areas. The lack of cover. On top of that, there's no crowd management. There's nothing dictating the flow of a battle where there's 64 people per team. This adds to the 128 player issue. Now every battlefield has had its share of absolute horrific maps. But this is probably the first Battlefield where I can't name a single map that I think is very well designed. Renewal is probably the best at a solid 6/10, mainly just cause there's too many open areas. I mean I just laugh now when there is a skyscraper in an enemy HQ sector that has full overwatch of an objective. So the enemy team has 3-4 infantry sitting up there shooting us and there's nothing we can do about it except hope that a helicopter can take them out. Like come on, you had to know that would happen. HQ sectors should have NO defense/offense advantages against an objective. You should not be able to sit inside of an HQ sector and defend or attack an objective. An HQ sector is for spawning safely and getting into the battle. Not camping. 
5. Vehicle Roles - Again, this was not a good decision. Some of these vehicles have distinct jobs on a battlefield and should not be in the same role. A littlebird absolute dominates everything and is more effective than a chopper. A jet should not be in the same area as any heli. The bolte reminds me more of an APC role than a light vehicle role. You force people to decide between a MAB, Tank, APC, or AA tank. You give rise to situations where you can have multiple AA tanks out at once. Now I will give you credit in that AA tanks are as effective as Bf4 and people don't just sit inside of their spawn, camping Air like in Bf4. But I've been in games where 2 people decide to spawn AA tanks. And that combined with the 64 players all capable of having AA + sundance, you get absolutely nuked as Air. 

I mean all of these are at the core of the game and will take some heavy changing. And it also seems to indicate some kind of change in direction of the franchise, which is really disappointing. You have a monopoly on this genre...and you decide to 180 the game and try to get in on Apex/CoD turf? Why??? Capitalize on this for gods sake. Now the game can be saved and here are my general suggestions

1. Get rid of specialists. Turn them into characters, and characters only. Bring back classes. Take their gadgets and traits and put those as things you could select in a load out. Two gadget slots. You're going to have to actually think about the balance here and which gadgets should go into which slots for which classes. Restrict weapon types to certain classes. Restrict gadgets to certain classes. Bring back actual balance here. You're not throwing away you work. The traits, the gadgets, the skins, animations; those are all still in there. And they can still be used in MTX. But you're just reintroducing balance. For example a medic class. One gadget slot you can either have Falyk's healer or Angel's heal. Both of these will let you revive anyone. But this medic class can't grab the armor applier. Or the anti vehicle goodies. But then maybe you play an engineer class with all the classic engineer goodies. Repair, mines, anti vehicles, etc. Maybe they can only use SMGs and shotguns to account for their ability to kill vehicles more easily. Other specialists gadgets (like the wingsuit) may need a rework all together as the wingsuit is very very very powerful. 
2. Really think about player flow and positioning in map design. If you introduce a higher ground location, think about the areas that the higher ground can fire upon. Think about how often players will need to run through that killzone. How can it be bypassed if needed? Things like that. 
3. Rework vehicle roles. Based on the current designs, with upgrades and all; I think it needs to work like this. MAV needs to be its own thing with the current map design. Its own support role. APC and Boltes should be in the same category. Light vehicles are fine with jeeps and the hovercraft in one role. Tanks should be its own role. AA tank should be its own role. Jets should be its own role. Transport helicopters should be in its own role. Attack choppers and Littlebirds need to be in one role. To me this not only helps addressed some of the map by leaning on vehicles more to negate killzones (MAV being always out now. Transport heli being always out. More jeeps/hovercraft), but it also introduces more opportunities for vehicle balance and vehicle vs vehicle gameplay. Jets are a littlebirds worse nightmare. Littlebirds and attack choppers have comparable firepower. But since a jet will always be on the prow now, littlebirds have a higher risk. This can also be said since AA tanks will have their own slot. I know a great many players are frustrated at littlebirds right now cause a good littlebird player will go 100 - 1 easy. I've seen it happen and I say good for them. It takes skill. But the issue is that in prior games the infantry class design + vehicles designed help counter those players. Because of the issues stated above, this isn't happening nearly as smoothly. 

To me, those 3 things are what will save this game. Portal is carrying this game hard right now. But the "main" game absolutely falls flat for my original reasons.