Personally, I prefer the releases that are grounded in reality. Current day equipment, or historical. I get that we weren't going to get another WW1 or WW2 release any time soon but I would have liked them to revisit the Vietnam war properly but I guess these days they aren't too keen to paint anyone as the bad guys, hence the multinational team of specialists against another multinational team of the same specialists. I want real weapons and equipment, with at least semi accurate performance and damage. With this release being set in the future they can do what they want really although the absence of thermal sighting seems to stick out as something you would assume would be commonplace in this fictional future setting even if it would be massively overused and cause issues.
Not every single thing needs to be changed, but I appreciate a team who tries to keep things fresh a heck of a lot more than those who are happy with everything remaining stagnant for as long as possible.
I think people are more taken back by the outright removal of certain features more than EA trying something different - I just hope the community can (constructively) work with the dev team to salvage Season 1
