Apols if there's already a thread for this, but couldn't find one in the first 10 pages of the forum.
Anyone else thing that EA totally blew it with BF3? They basically chucked away everything that was interesting and original about BF2 (intuitive squad system, commanders and detailed squad ordering system, artillery, UAV etc.) in favour of a relatively small scale, fast twitch, frenzied CoD style game which we've all seen a dozen times before. Frankly I felt CoD multi was a step backwards from games like BF2, and really wasn't much different to playing Quake 2 team deathmatch, which I did 10 years ago.
Also, the rewards system in BF3, which was excellent in BF2, is obviously designed for 14 year olds with zero attention span, as there is a constant stream of meaningless medals and promotions. I got my first promotion without even getting a kill... In BF2 you actually had to work for these rewards, and because they were hard to get and the promotions were quite sparse you felt a sense of achievement when you recieved one. I still remember when I got my veteran knife badge in BF2, and it still stands as one of my proudest gaming moments.
BF3 had the potential to be the greatest FPS of all time, and if they had expanded on the elements that made BF2 so great they could well have achieved this. But instead they threw away all that progress to cater to the lowest common denominator. BF2 is amongst my all time favourite games, I put hundreds of hours into it, and I am sad and disappointed that the franchise has headed down this path.