regarding your point in of unintended impact, sure we will not know how players will react to no longer beign able to having all the fast vehicles i.E Hovercraft, Recon and Bolte be exclusively made up of the 2 seater with the 30mm cannon which on top can take 2-3 M5 rockets without killing the driver and gunner, while the Recon does not have that luxury or the hovercraft that flat out does not have a 30mm cannon. We can expect that if a portion of the team still religiously picks said vehicle at least you will not get the experience of havin 3-4 bolts + 2-3 tanks thus reducing the absolute chaos this combination allows to happen. combined arms does not mean vehicles get to ruin the fun for 90% of the infantry players.
The Bolte has been an absolutely broken piece of gameplay-mechanics since the moment players realized how busted the 30mm cannons are in the game and for 4 months they have been more or less ruining the gameplay since they are just that absurldy fast and there are always so many. last time i played there were 4 Bolts driving around in a god damn kongo line trough the objective and there are is next to nothing oyu can do to stop it. sure you can shoot the first one but then the following 3 know exactly where you are and back to the deploy screen you go. is that fun? i'd argue no is it fair? also imo no.
next your point of "camping tanks" is a bit vauge. from my experience tanks mostly die to 3 things in this game.
also that argument only holds somewhat true if both teams excusively use the Bolte instead of the heavy tank or Wildcat. now i have been here long enough to know the vast majority of players is well capable of choosing the worst vehicles if they are allowed to choose so sure it could happen
the statement the Tank is outclassed by the Wildcat is to me at least absurd. i play a fair bit of wildcat with the 50mm AT cannon to be versaitile and i can tell you with great confidence that for me to 1v1 a tank and winning i have to play well and said tanker has to make all the mistakes, i mean sure one can take the AT missile but why use the Wildcat then instead of the tank which is better at dealing with AT to begin with... i mean sure people will make the most braindead load-out choices but then they are just free food for jets and choppers....
"However even if there is a tank, because of it's lack of a meaningful ability to defend itself against 63 other players who can respawn within a few seconds, spawn on squad mates and all have infinite adaptability on top of some cheesey mechanics"
i'd attribut this more towards the issue of free loadout choice then to the vehicles beign underequipped. restricted loadouts i.E classes did allow better tankers to engage targets based on who is a threat. they were able to pick out the engineers and recons first and kill them fast/evade them
Your Statement 2. tipped me off the most, thus sparking teh sarcastic comment. you are not locked out of anything but a force multiplier. and regardless of how many times people say BF is "combined arms" does not mean vehicles need to be balanced and restricted accordingly to ensure the 80-90% of server population playing as infantry currently has to suffer trough 4 Boltes, 3 Tanks, 2 Attack-choppers and 2 or more Nightbirds just obliterating anythign they choose. that is why a lot of player tend to quit after a few rounds, currently vehicles in their number and potency are just too lopsided.
Statement 3. is the age old story of vehicles beign their own gate-keeper. sure if you just started flying in 2042 you will die, a lot even, but DICE has either trough thinking or by pure flipping coincedence given players a full progression training room in co-op matches against bots to at least learn the flying mechanics and unlocking some early equippment without getting curbstomped.
i used co-op matches to get my settings sorted before jumping in a live-match and even testing out certain weapons, why is that too much to ask of people to learn how to be a pilt or tanker or whatever?
Statemet 4. can be true or not map flow has so far been horrible becasue crossing open field made you an easy target for vehicles and snipers, now with less vehicles and more infantry that can change drastically, we will have to see.
Like you said BF is a " Combined Arms Game" but that does entail that both sides have to be a fun experience, and so far playing infantry has been the least enjoyable for me and many others in my firends list it has ever been. now i give oyu that the reason for that is not excuisively with vehicles but they are part of the problem currently and evidently.
regarding your Nightbird statement i agree most likely Attack-Chopprs and Jets will become somewhat scarce, but that means instead of all 3 dunking on you you will have at worst 2 flying vehciels to contend with in your tank or as infantry instead of the former 4-6 of them.... now i'd have gone even further with soem changes i.E remove the heavy cannon form the transport choppers and remove the side-mounted miniguns for one central mini gun where the heavy canon slot was before and redesign the side mini-guns to mounted MGs like the choppers used to have for the longest part in BF.
Also less fast moving choppers (Nigtbird and attack-Chopper) means more players will be able to focus the transport choppers if they overextend and focus them down at leats in theory i have learned to expect that many teamates will just flat out not care, but hey its an improvement in my book.
I agree other BF games had less issues with vehicles vs infantry, but that was mroe due to the map-design instead of well balanced mechanics. 2042 has without a shadow of a doubt the worst maps i have ever played on in any BF game ( i've played since BC2 actively).
now i've had teh Mav vs Bolte discussion with a friend yesterday and my take is the Bolte was annoying because it was fast, hard to hit and had an absurdly powerful 30mm cannon, the Mav is slower, easier to hit and takes a lot longer to escape away. so my point is it fits the transport role a lot better form that alone not even mentioning a 2 seater vs a 5 seater argument....
i say lets see how it plays out for a change because it sure as well was and is busted as it is atm so a change has to be made. if it makes the game worse DICE can still redo it later.
