There is that free to play Heroes & Generals, pretty sure the standard weapon is bolt action and automatics are short range/very inaccurate at longer range. I havn't played it for a few years though.
I don't even remember if it is based on WWI or WWII.
WW2, standard weapon is Semi-Auto. Back during development it was Garand for Americans and actually bolt-action Kar98k for Germans, but MUH BALANCE and they changed it to G43. Honestly speaking though, the only thing stopping everyone from running with STGs/MG42s/FG42s and so on is the RIDICULOUS FUCKING GRIND. It takes longer than human lifespan to get to something useful, honestly. Fun game, but IMO suffers from excessive F2P grind syndrome.
There has not been good casual WW2 shooter since Call of Duty 2. There wasn't a lot of problem there, even if in Multiplayer you could run around with STG all the time, because all the cool people took Kar98ks because they killed in one shoot.
World at War was actually pretty good. Sure, the MP-40 with the dual magazines was stupidly good, but there was plenty of unscope bolt-action fighting to be had, especially because they were pretty much guaranteed one-taps. They even managed to make CoD MP work with tanks.
Speaking of tanks, BF1's are broken as shit. The only way you'll die is if there's a better tanker on the other team (and not even then if you're hull-down in the one-man); the best infantry can do is all go assault and try to ping you with the AT rifle. Maybe it'll be a different story on maps that aren't 70% wide open sand dunes.
Infantry being basically helpless against tanks without their own tank or field gun was the reality of the situation though, wasn't it?
Not really. WWI tanks were not WWII-onward tanks and were relatively gimmicky. But in the game tanks can't get stuck in mud and trenches every two meters or break down incessantly, and infantry can't lie in wait to climb up and lob grenades into hatches, so they give everyone some sort of tools to deal (albeit only shit AT grenades for medics and supports). But that's really not enough.
The light support tank, man. High-mounted, turreted gun with 360 degree traverse. Small, relatively fast. Can fire canister shells and mount an autocannon. The autocannon canister is great for pretty much everything that isn't an armored vehicle, the normal shells are great for everything that is--it takes 3-4 reload cycles to kill one of the larger tanks, which have low, hull-mounted cannons, move more slowly, and are much larger targets. Anything short of a cannon round or AT weapon won't cause damage, and those are all relatively immobile long-ranged weapons (i.e. back up behind a hill, repair, pop out and snipe). You can back up faster than an assault can run at you with an AT grenade. Even going in balls-deep isn't dangerous if you're paying attention, I've sat for entire matches on the main enemy spawn repeatedly killing half their team (and still losing because the rest of mine sucks donkey dong, natch) without much danger.
One thing that I do really like, though, is the little scope twinkle. If you haven't played, basically what happens is that any time someone with a scope weapon aims down it, everyone who can see them from the front (regardless of range) has a bright twinkle pop up on their location. Absolutely marvelous for cutting down on bush-wookie gameplay and encouraging scopeless sniping.