It's another example of feckless design. They don't know what they are doing.
DMRs in BF4 - when they were alternatives to class-locked weapons - were a nice-to-have choice.
I regularly remember using DMRs instead of SMGs as an engineer on larger maps, for example.
With an unlocked/open weapon system this just doesn't work, but DICE has thoughtlessly gone with it anyway.
I remember that Battlefield 4 had multiple weapon balance passes and that DMRs were pretty terrible at first, but only became decent to use later down the line. Weapon balance isn't something that's so easy that you can get it perfect the first time around.
Yes, it must be complicated, but they have DECADES of stats and a couple of games that had nearly the same weapons.
It's ridiculous. They get it wrong again and again and again.
Whether it's because they mess up the formula themselves (open weapons) or just incompetence or lack of testing or lack of expertise or whatever, it's not really very excusable.
Pretty much every Battlefield has adjustments to how weapons work on a technical level. The way recoil and spread works is quite a bit different from how it was done decades ago. So just because the weapon model is the same, it doesn't mean that the way the weapon works is going to be the same.
Every game is also different in terms of engagement distances. So every game requires its own balance. They can test it all they want, but the community will use weapons in ways that the developers can't necessarily predict. There is no multiplayer FPS game in existence that manages to nail the balance the right away.
