Battlefield 1942-2-1943 and Bad Company 2 are pretty fun games in MP. I played 2 too many hours on PC i cant even count. Everything was revolutionary at that time. Big maps with all kinds of vehicles. And maps that werent clusterfucks. It was simple, just pick up and play. Maps were clear with good art design. There were not tons of effects fogged your vision. There were not 100 of weapon unlocks.
Game was mostly balanced. People really tried to play team work.
Bad Company 2 was last entry in series before this so called "realistic movement style" adapted in series. It was another simple game compared to what we have these days. All classes had distinct art style / weapon style and all made difference in game. You could turn around a game if you had great engineer/medic etc. Destruction was amazing and maps are series best. Rush also was introduced and it was good mode in this game. Not half baked but precisely designed to be fun. While newer battlefield games can pride with our maps are biggest ever , "you can combine all our old games and it wouldnt cover 1 map in this blah blah ". In reality this game felt you like it had bigger maps. Because in Rush you were going a really long way vertically.And no those aren't empty areas you had to run or hope to spawn some guy in near location. Those were interesting buildings/roads etc.
Nowadays BF1-BF3-BF4 all feels boring, empty, unbalanced and bad to be honest. There are many reasons for this.
1- Bad Map design.
These games have really forgettable and terribly designed maps. To be a good map in multiplayer game it needs to have clear exists/ins, good artstyle and memorable design. In newer games all maps have 100x of corners/windows etc feels you ill and want to puke. While graphics are getting better art style is significantly going worse. Adding particles and effects for sake of it making maps visual sore.Also most of maps are empty areas this big problem
2-Unbalanced game design
nowadays classes does not have unique differences back in the day they had. In last few games some classes have incredible advantage to others due map design and weapon balance. It makes no sense to play lets say medic when you can play recon and get free kills with incredible powerful weapons.
3-Too many weapon/challenges/ribbons makes game complex and boring.
this feels like overwhelming after a point.Every minute you unlock something weapon,cameo,tank skin,ribbon etc. Those are literally useless shit should not be in the game.
One of things made older battlefield games better this things were not in.
4- Movement and Destruction
Movement took a huge took with BF3 and forward in my opinion. Those new animation system copied from Mirror's Edge wasn't the thing series needed. Prone was and is still bad shit shouldn't be in multiplayer games. Also it doesn't help visual design of series gone really bad so with these new movement systems sometimes its impossible to spot enemies.
Destruction is literally kicked from battlefield series with 3. I don't know why they did this considering BFBC2 had best destruction system in the gaming.I guess they wanted to design artsy buildings instead of plastic shelters (were easily destructible) , i hope they bring real destruction like Bad Company 2 one day.